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Second level of completion gives better idea where piece is headed

Unfinished digital painting - Grandeur 2 - Dan Beck

Like the previous article, I am sharing a piece before it has been finished. Unlike the first offering, I do know the outcome today and perhaps you will also.

The program I use has a color fill tool - most do. Because I had stretched in outlines, it was generally pretty easy to fill between the lines and create a second level of completion to the piece.

I chose a mix between gradients and personalized textures - ones which I adjusted manually or pulled from a section of a previous painting. I can paint using sections of my own painting - a startling realization - which gives me a never ending palette - but like most tools can be easily overused.

So far my steps seem rather obvious. You can not develop a piece without the basic composition and without the basic color scheme. I don’t have a mystical way of doing things, but where I choose to go from here is what makes things more interesting to me -

because the process of art is one of going down any number of possible paths.

See Also

• Process
  First piece to be painted by using a section of piece as paint
• Apple - Appleworks Tips
  Doesn’t even touch the capabilities of creating palettes with this program - not sure they know

Finished Work, Intention, Nothing More to Add

Toro Tutor - Digital Painting 2005

Above is the finished piece to a series of images showing the creation and steps to this work.  This is the fourth part to this series: Stage 1, Stage 2 and Stage 3 can all be seen by following the links or rolling down the page where appropriate.

The changes from the last version shown are minor, but then again seemed essential at the time and from my perspective pull the piece together that much more. The shadow has been darkened, the plow is in a small dirt cloud, and the piece has been signed.

The most interesting and/or difficult question for the artist is when to stop. When is the piece finished?  Though I make that decision for every piece, I am not sure I have a clear answer.

But I can say it is not finished until it looks right - ’til adding would not make it better, ’til what was intended to be said is said.  One quits hopefully not because one is tired of messing with the piece, but rather because it finally feels like you’ve got it.

See Also

• Art Process Ideas - When is the art finished?
  Another artists take on when to say when
• Art Therapy
  The other angle - finished is not what’s important
• Tom Shermann - The Finished Work of Art is a Thing of the Past
  Long discussion of unfinished work of unfinished life and proper interpretive framework