Another well intentioned attempt to follow a painting from ‘cradle to grave’, or rather from the first sketches through to the end product. The painting I have chosen is about 4′ x 5′ (must get into metric one day) and I have a special affection for it, although currently it remains untitled. It’s part of a series I’m working on for Despard Gallery, Tasmania, in preparation for my next solo exhibition with them in early 2012.

Strange Tales will include about six large paintings like this one, a number of smaller bird canvases, and perhaps some large scale charcoal drawings. I’ve found that I’m missing drawing, particularly drawing from life, the immediacy and the fluency of drawing media. Although I’m still working it out, most of these paintings will be specifically about Tasmania, the island’s history and its colonial art, this constant sense of the past and the present colliding.

This is the canvas with its first coat of acrylic paint. While trying to replicate something of the style of either colonial or naive art, I’m sticking to some of the more traditional painting methods, like starting from a pinkish ground (usually closer to a red/brown or pale terracotta, but I want these images to be sickly sweet, right from the beginning). The image is of a small girl, wearing colonial era garb, riding a Tasmanian Tiger. A young boy holds the reins.

The initial sketch, executed with willow charcoal. At this point I’m referring quite constantly to the smaller sketch in my journal (pictured above).

Wrote the words ‘delicate subjugation’ on the top right of the canvas.

Introduce washes of acrylic paint to start picking out the tones.

White acrylic paint goes on…

End of the first day!