I am thinking more before I dip my paint brush into the paint. I am thinking about what I want my picture to be about and how I can show what it is about without a lot of extraneous shapes and details. After I think about those things, then I think about values and getting a range of them into my painting. After I've thought about the aforementioned things a while, had a snack, paced the hallway, pet some beagles and munched on some dark chocolate, I return and begin to think about what colors to paint with.

You would think that with adding all this thinking to my painting process, my painting would turn out A+, right? I need to share with you so you don't think you are alone out there in the B- portion of the bell curve. Sometimes I give myself a C, only every 7th or 10th painting do I get an A. Painting is a learning process, figuring out what might work, trying something new, something old, and sometimes something different. So don't get frustrated as long as you are painting and thinking, its good for our brains and if we got all A's all of the time our heads would get too big to fit into our thinking caps.