Eighteen.

Howdy. Another numerical post title tonight - eighteen being the number of paintings that'll be in my next show.

Past few days have been extremely productive. Creativity is bursting at the seams again. Lots of painting, a bit of drawing, lots of design. All of the metalflake paintings are well underway now - the final four are in the glazing process. That should be finished soon, and then it'll be clearcoat time again.

The glazing process is probably my favourite part of the whole sequence now. So much fun playing with vibrant colour, and it's probably the least labour-intensive step, too. It's funny - my first attempt at glazing was only four years ago, and at the time I thought I did a bang-up job. Other painters who saw the piece were generous with their praise, too. And the painting was garbage. Just horrible. I didn't even know how to hold a brush properly for glazing at that point. Plus I kinda skimped on the drawing part of the process 'cause I was so geared up to start painting.

Anyhow, glazing and I are old friends now. I think it was reading about how and why glazing was done in the Renaissance era that made it all come together for me - essentially, the pigments they had were so primitive, they'd do a yellow glaze and then a blue glaze on top to create green (for example). In some ways that seems needlessly complicated in the modern era, but similar practices do add a lot more vibrancy and chroma to colour.

Meanwhile, I thrashed out the designs for seven more of these paintings today:

And last night I whipped up a list of what design will go on which painting:

Everything's coming along nicely, now. I should soon be able to predict a completion date.

Good times, good times...