Evolution of an art work. Part 1

I've decided to be brave and share the progress of my final art piece for my course.  It's a bit intimidating but will be good for me to look back on in the future.  We are required for our final piece to submit an original landscape, still life or interior in acrylic, on canvas.  Our work must be in either the hard edge semi-abstract style (like the butterfly I posted previously), realism or impressionism.

So, how does one make a start?  You start by drawing thumbnails. In my case lots of them.  A thumbnail is a small sketch around 7cm x 10cm.  At first I just drew willy nilly and eventually some ideas started to stick.  My mind became stuck on a window scene.  A pot of orchids, a mug of tea and some bits and bobs on the window sill with a landscape scene in the distance.

This is the initial idea as a thumbnail. With further consideration and feedback from my teacher I started to rethink my composition.  In this composition the mountain fights the pot of orchids for the focal point and I have no clear direction lines within the painting to keep the viewers eye moving around within the canvas. I also didn't have enough repetition eg. repeated shapes or textures.

Onto yet another thumbnail.  I swapped out the dominant form of Coonowrin Mountain for the Coochin Twins (both local to my area) and think this has worked quite well.  I've introduced repetitive shapes in the form of an orange near the mug (copies circles from pot), circular trees and bushes and a sun catcher at the top of the window.  I've introduced directional lines with the banana, ferns, the lines of mountains and farm paddocks in the background.  The orange bothers me and the banana isn't quite working.  I'm really not sure about the sun catcher as it could compete with the pot for interest even if I use subtle colours.

Here is a second option in the same theme. I've  replaced the orange with a cupcake and the cherry on top repeats the circle pattern on the pot.  I've maintained the circular trees to continue this theme. I added a bird purely because I like birds and I rather fancied the idea of calling the painting "Benjamin Bird comes to Tea". Very Enid Blyton or Beatrix Potter.  I've included directional lines with broad leaves with strong lines in the veins as I think these will be much quicker to paint than ferns and I just wondered what they'd look like. I've replaced the suncatcher with a terrible cloud and sun combination which does nothing for me at all.

Sorry this is so hard to see.  This is the final piece that I've come up with. I've drawn it onto watercolour paper primed with undercoat and will use it as a practice piece before starting on my canvas. I'll work out my colours etc here.  Before I started playing with paints I came up with the oh.so.brilliant. idea of having a play with the Brushes programme on Jeff's iPad.  Here are the results....

How cool is this!  I got to try composition ideas in colour! The drawing is pretty poor as I'm not used to this programme and it was done 'fingerpaint style'.  Gives me an idea though. I've introduced an orchid flower at bottom left to draw the eye in (replaced the rock).  I've overlapped the banana over the pot and widow sill to create depth and to create a line for the eye to follow from the pot, up to the fern, along the fern and back to the focal point which is the pot.  The repetition of red draws the eye around the picture.  not sure about the orange cupcake wrapper though and need something above the cupcake and mug to draw the eye.

 Here I've introduced some of our local red earth above the mug and I think it works ok. It creates repetition with the cupcake wrapper but I'm still not sure about the orange of the cupcake.  What do you think?  Does it compete too much with the pot? I've included some birds way in the distance to add some interest to the empty bit of sky and to move the eye along.

Here's the final doodle I've come up with.  I think I prefer the blue cupcake wrapper as it makes the arrangement of cake and mug more subtle.  It goes against the rule of using warm colours in the foreground of the composition to bring the subjects forward.  I've varied the tonal values of the mountains and included a smidge of banana yellow in the orchids and the poorly drawn flowers on the mug.  I think I'm getting close to what I want the final piece to look like. I love the orchids in the pot. The greens against the red and the flowers in the blue of the sky. Remember if you want to see the images more clearly just click on them and they enlarge.  Any feedback is welcome. Thank you for reading and I hope you are enjoying a glimpse into the process.