Mrs Butterworth and Friends

Mrs Butterworth and Friends, 20x20" oil, Diane Mannion

Slow Painting

After finishing field study landscapes in a few hours, it's difficult making the transition to studio work where time moves in slow motion.  Large studio paintings can take days, weeks or months to finish.  

Other techniques come into play.  Slow painting allows glazing, wet over dry, wet into wet, scraping, and making endless changes.  The problem is losing patience and calling it finished before it's well... done or polished.

Also my critic friends' opinions!  Thought this painting was finished until suggestions were made to push it a bit farther and define a few spots more carefully.  A painting has to please more than me! Writers want their novels read, composers want their music heard, and I want my paintings seen not just by me.  I am also my toughest critic.

Mrs Butterworth and Friends went through many changes!  Worked outside, inside, and from imagination trying to wrestle this one into a painting that works.  Flowers and glass were the most fun but  orchestrating the backlit arrangement to form dynamic and cohesive patterns was the most difficult.  Varied the paint application from thin to thick, creamy and buttery.  Sweet! 

The first stage felt too boxed in and needed something else going on in the foreground.  Easy to see how many changes I made, and I'm glad I did.  Also glad I listened to my critics.

 Found the vintage Mrs Butterworth and her sake bottle buddy in an antique shop.  They've been hanging around my studio for years waiting for me to paint them (and may have to wait a few more years for me to paint them again).