Starting a New Painting

I’ve just started a new painting today. It’s been in the works for a few months now. I’m going to paint a transparent heart in the cosmos, with music notes flowing out of it. The vision for this painting came to me when I was working on another painting and listening to music. I remember thinking how much I love music and how much it enhances my experience when I paint, then the vision of the heart just hit me, I felt a bolt of joy radiate all throughout my body filling me with love and excitement. That’s how I knew it was going to be my next painting. So, to put it mildly, I’m a little excited to start this painting. I’m excited for the journey this painting is about to take me on. Every painting is created through its own unique journey. Each one with its own unique fears to face and conquer. New challenges will arise and will need to be solved with creative solutions. Surprise decisions will need to be made that can change the outcome of the painting in unexpected ways. My decision-making is something I need to work on. I tend to overthink some decisions, which causes me to take much longer to finish a painting. So, for this painting, I’m going to experiment with being more decisive with the choices that I make and see what happens. I feel a little scared doing this but it’s a fear I must face to figure this out. This will help me trust myself more and grow not only as an artist but as a person. Each painting’s journey provides a transformation for the artist. This is exactly why the journey is what I look forward to and love the most, even more than the destination.

The way I take on a painting is with a leap of faith into creative inspiration itself. Basically, with the idea that creation begets creation. I jump into the painting and start creating according to my vision. While I’m in this act of creation I have supreme faith that creative inspiration will come and the painting will reveal itself to me, as I journey through its creation. This is how every painting goes for me they never end up looking like my original vision, each painting is a mystery in its destination.

I’ve come up with a pretty good strategy for this painting, I’m going to start painting the cosmic background first since it’s supposed to be a transparent heart in the cosmos. Then I will paint the heart on top of the cosmic background. Then I will paint a highlight around the heart with music notes flying out of the highlight. With this painting creating the transparent heart will present the biggest challenge for me, because I’ve never painted transparent realism before. Honestly, I’m feeling a little scared and concerned that I won’t be able to pull it off but I’m ready to take the risk and find out. I’ve also come up with a creative solution for the transparent effect. I’m going to use transparent zinc white and build up the lightest areas of the heart and use less for the darker areas, which will leave the darker parts more transparent, and allow the viewer to see more of the cosmic background. Once I finish detailing the whole heart like this, I will paint the colors of the heart on top of the transparent white. I’m looking to tint the transparent white with the color. To make the colors more transparent I’m going to mix the transparent zinc white into the colors, this will make the colors more transparent, without overly muting them. This should allow me to lay down the colors without covering up the background and still be able to see the colors. So that’s my plan of execution, now I get to see how well it works out.