Most of my projects start with an idea of what I want to convey in the painting. For the Carousel painting it was mostly focusing on the children reaching for the ring. After that my ideas get more concrete as I go along. In this case, I had reference photos to guide me and the wonderful opportunity to actually paint at the Looff Carousel on its off season non-working hours. As I worked on the composition on site, I was able to get a bit of the rotation feel (to me anyway) in the composition using the fence, and base of the Carousel.

In my newest two paintings the idea is rotation. These two are more experimental and there are reference drawings not photos. Some people will make a color plan - right now my base idea is fairly linear and I need to work it into a more painterly color thing - thus the experiment.

Another painting idea I have is based on a photo, but beyond making a copy of the photo I might limit the palette because the photo lends itself to it. The idea would be, how far can I stretch 3 or four colors within this composition.

Off to the studio!