Painting Psyche Day #1

So painting never happens as you have it planned. There are always factors beyond your contol. This painting it was "Painters Block" I knew what I needed to paint but not how I was going to paint it .. the sketches were already starting to look like "Mud Pie" and I was using a Pencil. (Never a good sign) . The original Idea was to have Ero's wing in part on the background ..but the more that I looked at the sketch it just did not look right. The sketches seemed to be off center. 

 At this point I called to talk to the model Sometimes I can find insperation from the model. We talked a little bit and I asked all kinds of questions. Mostly what she had invisioned for the painting. We passed a few ideas back and forth. but only a few things started to form in my head but nothing solid.

 Next stop was Google Images . You never know what your going to get with a search. I wanted to see what other artists from history had to say about the Goddess. about 90% of them were rather bland. Nothing distinct except she was always seen with Eros. "For such a remarkable woman she seems to be shadowed by her Boyfriend" . Next Stop "Modern interpretations"   

Deviantart.com is a great place for inspiration . You get to see what other artist have done, What works , What does not , The good the bad and the color crayon. I have to say that I was impressed. One thing that I noted was that all of the later versions say Post 1950's  she had butterfly wings (not saying that there was not a depliction before that but its very popular to paint her with them now in comparsion to the wingless paintings before then)   AH HA!! Butterfly wings !! 

So the idea is to paint the model with a Toga and have the background with butterfly wings ..ok so that part did not change ...but how to paint them .. Looking at what I have in stock .. I had an abundance of blue and some white .. ..Painting skys ... Well How many times I have I done that .. too many to count .. So this time I wanted more of a texture behind the wings and not the smooth uniform blues found in most of my previous paintings . Hour of painting swirls on the background mixing in white into the blue paint .. 

 Todays Road Blocks overcome 

• Painter's Block 
• Procrastination

Tomorrows Roadblocks  

• I have this odd wrinke in the canvas that might cause problems with the final product . This can also distort the wings if its not straghtened out first. I will have to wait for the paint to dry before I tackle this ... also I will have to inlist the help of Imp .. she's good as this sort of puzzle .