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How do you decide what your painting needs? How do you know when it's finished? Taking a sequence of photographs throughout the painting process can help you to assess your progression at various stages of development and give you clues as to what to do next. It's simple: just use your cell phone camera to capture an image of your painting at the end of each work session.

I demonstrated the first layer of this piece during my recent Painting the Portrait in Watercolor workshop. On the subsequent layer, you can see that I've added a cool background glaze and begun to work around the painting, not working any one area to completion. As I continue to work around the page, a couple more layers have been added. What a difference a warm glaze over the background makes! (See images, above.)

I still have a long way to go on this portrait of my son, but I decided this was a good time to stop and see what the painting looks like in black and white. Removing all color from my photo helps me to analyze the values which will help me to make decisions as I continue. I'll explain how I remove color from a photo on my IPhone (hopefully you will be able to translate these steps to work on your own device.)

Once you've taken a photo of your painting-in-process on your mobile phone, select your photo in the Photos app, tap the Share icon, scroll down and tap Duplicate. This way you will preserve an original color version of your photograph. Now tap the Edit button in the top right corner. At the bottom of your screen be sure the Adjust icon is selected (It's the default selection on my phone and it looks like a dial with little white dots surrounding it). Just below your photograph you will see a row of adjustment tools; swipe across until you see the Saturation icon. Now all you have to do is swipe the slider bar until all color is removed. Tap Done. You can now assess your progress in black and white.

Note: I don't recommend the use of the Filter icon in your editing program (it looks like three overlapping circles). I've duplicated my photo three times and used the black and white filter settings Noir, Silvertone, and Mono, to show you the difference (see below - left to right or top to bottom, depending on your screen). The fourth image has the color removed using the Saturation icon.

Do you see how different the above black and white images are? The first three do not represent the correct values in my painting. Only by removing the color with the Saturation bar do I get an accurate black and white representation of the color photo.

Now that I have a proper black and white image, I can evaluate my progress. A couple things become apparent to me immediately: The red cap is almost the same value as the background which I will want to change. Also, I don't want to go any darker than the hair next to the face (currently the darkest value).

I'll continue working on this piece, little by little, using my cell phone to critique my progress along the way. Viewing my painting in miniature helps me to see the piece as a whole; and viewing it in black and white helps me make better value decisions as I move forward. This self-critique tip can be applied to any subject matter. Photographing my art throughout it's development is invaluable to me; I hope you find it helpful as well!

Paint. Love. Repeat.