The building blocks of a painting

I am thinking much about the building blocks of a painting, and a drawing too for that matter. But to build up a painting is much harder for me than making a drawing or a sketch. And when I´m trying to make a painting out of a sketch, the result gets very different in the end, and not the way I originally planned. Sometimes it´s good, but many times the result is rubbish. It´s like it´s hard to get the vision of the picture out of my head and down through my hands and into the painting.

So I try to make a layout first. To move around some building blocks, in photoshop or in sketches with pen and paper. I try to consider color, shape, pattern, spacing, density, content, symbolic meaning etc.

I´ve learned that it´s easier for me to start with black and white, or with two colors, one dark and one light, preferably complementary colors. Then it´s a bit more like working with a simple sketch. And from that stage I can increase for example, color shades, the shadows and highlights and paint in layers to make the painting more alive and the colors more faceted.