Steps Four and Five: Draw and Block In

Steps Four and Five: Drawing and Blocking In

Here I've used vine charcoal to do the drawing directly onto the canvas. I have the idea of the triangle (overall shapes for the set) in the back of my head, and I use various references, photos from google and wet canvas to give me the shapes and configurations of the various flower heads. The charcoal is easily wiped away with a paper towel, so it makes it easy to change my mind when I need to move a guy here or there. Normally, at this point, I would use a spray fixative on the canvas, but since I didn't have any, I just went over the charcoal marks with OMS to seal and dilute them. Once the drawing is done, I start to overpaint behind the flowers with very thin paint, mostly to see how the arrangement will look from a distance. I can still change things easily at this point.