New Painting in progress

I thought I would start the year off by doing something that I don't normally do and that is, to show a painting in stages, so that viewers can see my approach and techniques that I use. So many artists now a days are showing their work in stages like this on their blogs. So here I am giving it a try. To begin with, I usually do an underpainting with most of my paintings, but in this case, I didn't. I decided to draw the image first which came from a photo I took last September of flowers in a flower bed. I cropped the image several times on my computer, before deciding on the best composition or one that I found most pleasing to look at. I use a stay-wet pallet for my acrylics and I tend to squeeze out the paint at random on the surface and do all the mixing there as well. My pallet after a while looks a mess! I then always start with the background first and move forward on the canvas to the front by doing it in layers. As you can see, all the background is done and now I am working on the foliage at the back and moving forward towards the bottom front. Later I will start on the flowers by painting the smaller ones first and work towards doing the large one last. As I paint, I usually apply the dark tones first, then mid-tones and lastly the highlights. I try to bear in mind, the principles for building a painting, but quite frankly, if I only have a few of them down then I know I have a reasonably good enough painting. I then do all the details at the end of the painting. Sometimes I sign my paintings and other times I don't depending on the image, I'll sign the back instead. ( I have seen some paintings spoiled because of the signature on it.) I then apply a few coats of satin or matte varnish mixed with water and carefully apply it with a varnish brush onto the painting to protect it. And that's it.
Stay tuned for more progress on this painting!

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Category › Acrylic Painting , flowers , progress