Phase: 1

Date: September 29, 2005

Description:
Every painting starts with a sketch that is then traced and transferred to the watercolour paper using tracing paper. You can see the pencil outlines for the right half of this figure. I don’t sketch directly on the paper because it isn’t easy to erase without damaging the paper or leaving smudges. This photo was taken about 20 minutes into the painting process, with a very quick but careful wash done of the fiddle, figure and haystack in order to mark out where each should be, and to get an early sense of the colour distribution. From this point on I decided to concentrate first on the fiddle, and then on the figure.