Publisher's Notes

I said that I would blog my way through the design process and this was week one.  Since I had a very busy week meeting other deadlines I wasn’t able to get much done with this new project.  However, most times when I get something in my mind that I want to paint or am hired to paint, I begin by thinking about it.  Seriously.  While I’m working on other things, I mull the next assignment over in my mind, going from one thought to another and brainstorming about how I want things to come together.   The thoughts keep snowballing until I come up with a good idea of how I want to tackle the design. 

This is what I did during the past week, hoping to get to more concrete things in the coming week.   Here are some of the things that I pondered.  I decided to gather various coffee and tea elements that I have in my house and work from a real still-life set up; Items such as a teapot and teabags, coffee beans, mugs, a creamer & sugar, etc.   My first thought was to intermix the coffee elements with the tea elements so the two favorites weave together.   But as I continued brainstorming I envisioned a double raised panel board, one panel with a tea still-life on it and the other with a coffee still-life on it.  One board - two paintings.   Then during the week while talking with a friend that is an antique dealer, I told her about my design idea and she mentioned that she had quite a few antique items that are coffee and tea related.  She was willing to loan me some, so my thoughts went to putting together a still-life of antique coffee and tea items because her items are so unique.  But they are also rather primitive and mostly made of grey tin and I really wanted to have more color in this painting, since I would be sharing the process with you.   So I decided to save that idea and possibly design a different painting later using just the antique items.   That brings me back to a still-life design of mixed coffee and tea items.  So, this week’s assignment for myself is to pull my items together and set up the still-life.  If all goes well, next week I’ll be telling you about the final design sketch.    ........putting pencil to paper......Tracy