All images, graphics, and content on these pages are © Carol Snedeker-Martinez, 1999-2008.
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At Long Last! ...
Seems to have taken me forever to get this page going. I
had big plans and then my business partner and I opened a
new healing center in our town and my painting time went
to business building time. So the page lingered here on the
site, in limbo ... as did my paints and my studio. I'm happy
to finally be getting to do some work and to be able to
show you a real "Work In Progess"!
Stage One: As you can see, I like to work with larger
canvases and acrylics on the floor in my studio. I can
spread out in a way I just can't do when working at the
drafting table. Anyway, this is a reworked canvas, 24" x
36", on which I had started an abstract several months
ago. For various reasons the abstract wasn't working for
me. I got out my trusty jug of gesso and painted the
canvas white again. The texture medium I had used was
still there, but hey, I'm an artist - I can work with it. I had
decided I wanted to work with lighter colors, blues, pinks,
lavenders, yellows, etc. and swished those colors over the
canvas. I had some help ...
Stage Two: Tuck, Assistant Art Director takes a break
from all the hard work and gets himself a drink of water.
Stage Three: As I was working I started thinking about
my other painting, An Ocean Of Time. I liked how it
worked out, liked the combination of abstraction with the
fantasy, symbolic sea turtle. I decided to do the same with
this canvas but was stumped for the image to use. I
thought about it overnight and came up with a butterfly. I
also added some "cloud" forms to give it an illusion of
being airborne. Some of the color of the background was
beefed up a little, too.
Stage Four: I let the canvas dry in front of a fan
overnight. You can probably tell from the previous photos
it was wet with water, glaze and paint when I took the
pictures  - hence the shiny spots and glare. The next day I
painted more defined clouds and added more color to the
background again. I hated the first clouds. Too small and
too defined. I tried it again and I think I'm liking these
better. Again, it's still wet so there is glare on the image.
Stage Five: Truthfully, the more I looked at the first
basic shape of the butterfly the more I didn't like it. The
pattern was too distracting and all my eye would look at
was the two big teardrop shapes of the bottom wings. I
used a piece of tracing paper to outline the overall shape,
then drew off lines for the veining, more like a real
butterfly, but easily made into more of a fantasy butterfly
with an imaginative paint job. Because I plan to paint
bubbles and some other things on the canvas as well, I
figured the more "toned down" version would lend itself to
a rainbow coloration as I moved along. Using a 9B lead
pencil I made heavy lines on the backside of the pattern,
taped it to the canvas and then used a ballpoint pen to
transfer the lines to the canvas ... homemade carbon paper!
Stage Six: This is where I am right now with the
painting. I tried a different rainbow coloration on the
butterfly last night and hated it this morning. So I painted
over it and got this instead. I like the blend of it better, as
well as the color burst from the head. I'll probably end up
sticking with this but I do plan to touch more color to the
tips of the top wings and spots of color on the tails of the
bottom wings. I'm also going to glaze lavender over the
clouds to tone down white so that the other things (as yet
to be painted) like the bubbles will stand out brighter
against the background.

If you look to the left of the photo you can see where I
have An Ocean Of Time propped up for inspiration and
reference for working on this one.
Stay tuned! More to come ...