Printing Some....Painting Some

 

I spent a few hours making some relief prints yesterday.  Nothing too taxing-- and I limited myself to three colors: red, black and sepia.  I ended up with about 20 prints that I will use as starting points for mixed media pieces.  I cleared my table of my printmaking suppies in the evening in preparation for transitioning to painting. 

I hung a blank canvas on my wall (well, actually two, of differing sizes) and have been staring at them ever since.  Well, not exactly "ever since,"  but I've been "sizing them up" so to speak while alternately moving through the house and flipping through my sketch books.  I'm torn:  Representational or abstract? Graphic or painterly?  Bold or subtle hues?  Organic or geometric?  Horizontal or vertical division of the canvas?  (Or none at all.)  Limited palette, or two or more distinct palettes within the painting?  Ever go through this kind of mental anguish before starting a piece of art?  Perhaps one of these days I'll get to the place of  "addressing"  more than one canvas at once. It sounds so freeing. But maybe it just divides the anguish between multiple canvases. However, one obvious benefit of the "multiples" approach is the possibility of moving ahead on one of the paintings while in "stuck mode" on the other(s).

I'm curious -- do you tend to work on one piece at a time until completion, or on multiple pieces at once?  And if multiple pieces, are they typically within the same medium, or do you go back and forth between mediums?

Cheers!