Lately I’ve been experimenting with turning rough sketches into paintings. I mean, I do that a lot, but usually the sequence is, I choose an image I want to turn into a painting, then I do rough sketches to work out the visual issues before starting to paint. In this case, I took some rough sketches that turned out pretty well and tried turning them into paintings.
This was a good experiment because I didn’t take the images too seriously, and there’s a playfulness to the resulting paintings that I don’t always get. This is just another small step forward for me as I continue to move toward getting freer, looser, and more confident in my painting.
“Expressionist Male Nude with Arms Folded.”
The painting is called “Israel’s Shadow.”
You don’t see a rough sketch for the painting above, “Rocco Raw,” because I did it right on the canvas, then painted it.