I Hate Painting Like This

Small. I hate painting small. It's not that the painting is small, so much as that there are some very small details that I'm working on currently. I spent today working on the second pass for Alva, our cat. It's a second pass and not a final pass because I'm getting closer, but haven't nailed the likeness yet. What today boiled down to is a lot of fiddly little brushwork. I hate fiddly little brushwork. Loose medium sized brushwork or chunky big brushwork are much more my speed. But the concept on this one was to make a smaller, gemlike painting. I like how it's going, but boy do I hate fiddly little brushwork paintings.

I also did some general futzing with some other background elements as well - just laying in some colors and general shapes - especially around the edges of the painting. That fun medium-sized brushwork. I'm planning for most of the detail and delicate brushwork to be focused on Hannah and Alva, with the detail falling off towards the edges. A bit like how human vision works - detail falls off very quickly from the center of focus and gets pretty blurry towards the peripherals.

-ZR