I love watching work in progress videos, especially of artists developing their paintings. I find it magical to watch that portrait come to life. But, what's not so magical is all the hours of thought put in to prepping the painting. Before the painting even comes into existence, so many hours,days and even months have been ideas discussed and weighed out, developed and tossed away. Then comes the composition planning, color palettes and test sketches, all before pencil is put to canvas, or paper.
I usually speed up my videos to 16 times faster than normal. Some parts 32 times faster. I try to keep my work in progress videos to under four minutes; if I can, closer to three minutes. I like to throw in a few seconds of normal speed video, so you can see how quickly I really work.
The point is, these videos are just a taste of how my work is created, how it develops. To watch me from start to finish would be rather tedious, I'm sure. What I don't include in these videos are the time consuming minutes I spend mixing up colors. The many, many moments I spend looking at my work and my reference pictures, or the real thing if I'm doing Plein Air. It's long and lengthy process. The cogs in my brain turning and evaluating the colors, and the location they are at cannot be recorded. The infinite number of times my eyes shift between photo and canvas would make for poor entertainment.
It's a long process, but I like to think I've taken the most exciting bits to share with you!