I am beginning work on a new painting of a couple watching New Years fireworks over the city. These two sketches show how the composition has evolved from the original idea to what will eventually be on the canvas.

Why the changes you ask? To begin with, I had thought to have the couple looking out over a nice winter snowstorm, something I personally find to be fairly romantic. The champagne was to be the key to the whole New Years angle…looking toward the future etc. When I ran the idea past Sara, she seemed stunned that I wasn’t planning on a nice fireworks display over the city. Once she said it, I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me before. So, the buildings have been scaled down to accommodate the light show. As for the change in the pose, this almost always happens once I have the models in front of me. What looks like a nice comfortable position turns out to be either awkward or totally impossible for a normal person. The sketch does serve the purpose of conveying the general idea to the models however. In this case the result is a far superior composition with a more intimate, relaxed pose and a nice diagonal created by the height difference between the figures.