Creating Envy

The Painting That Wasn't Satisfied With What It Had

Envy began with a plan.

It didn't keep it.

And looking back, there is something wonderfully ironic about that.

Of all seven paintings, Envy became dissatisfied with what it already had.

The original composition gave me a perfectly workable beginning, but as I painted, I kept looking at it and wanting something different. Certain elements no longer felt strong enough. Others demanded more space. Ideas shifted, disappeared or were replaced as the painting gradually moved away from the version I had first imagined.

Envy, it seems, wanted what it didn't have.

That is one of the reasons I wanted these Creation Galleries to exist.

If you saw only the finished painting, you would never know about the other versions buried beneath it. You wouldn't see the decisions I reversed, the elements I sacrificed or the moments when I stood back and realised that something I had already spent hours painting simply wasn't going to survive.

My sketchbook gives me a starting point, not a contract.

Once I begin painting, I allow the work to question that original idea. Sometimes the changes are tiny. With Envy, some became fundamental to the composition itself.

And perhaps that is where the greatest irony lies.

I was creating a painting about comparison, wanting and looking towards something else, while repeatedly looking at my own painting and thinking:

I want something different.

So I changed it.

Again and again, until the painting stopped trying to become the Envy I had originally imagined and became the Envy you see today.

These twelve stages allow you to watch that transformation happen.

Don't worry yet about understanding why every figure, object or symbol eventually found its way into the finished work. Those answers belong in the Artist Journal.

Here, we're looking at something else.

The versions of Envy that existed before the final one survived.

Watch Envy Change

Start with the original sketch.

Then watch carefully.

Because this is not simply a painting acquiring colour and detail.

It changes its mind along the way.

Original sketch for Envy by Julia O'Sullivan, showing the first composition and early ideas for the Seven Deadly Sins painting.

1. The First Idea — Envy on Paper

This is where Envy first began to exist outside my head.
The sketchbook is where I can be untidy. I don't need perfection here; I need to catch the idea while it is still moving. Figures find their positions, structures begin to appear and the first relationships within the composition are established.
At this point, I believe I know roughly where I'm going.
There is something wonderfully innocent about that certainty when I look back at it now.
Some of these ideas will survive all the way to the finished painting.
Others won't stand a chance.
This is Envy before Envy began questioning itself.

Envy composition transferred from the original sketch onto the painting surface, establishing the figures, landscape and early structure.

2. Taking Envy to the Surface

Moving from a relatively small sketch onto the full painting surface is always revealing.
Everything changes scale.
Spaces that seemed insignificant become enormous. Relationships between figures feel different. Areas that worked perfectly well within the sketch suddenly have to justify themselves across a much larger composition.
For now, I am establishing the framework rather than questioning it.
The drawing gives me somewhere to begin.
But I never regard these transferred lines as boundaries I am forbidden to cross.
The sketch is a guide, not a set of instructions.

First painted stage of Envy, with loose areas of colour beginning to establish the landscape, figures and overall atmosphere.

3. The First Colour — Giving Envy a World

The first paint is loose and uncomplicated.
I'm thinking about the whole surface rather than individual details: atmosphere, temperature, balance and the broad relationships between one area and another.
At this stage I can move quickly.
Nothing has accumulated enough hours for me to become too precious about it, and that freedom is important.
Colour also begins exposing things the pencil drawing couldn't.
A shape may suddenly feel too dominant.
Another disappears.
The composition starts behaving differently.
The drawing told me where to begin. Colour begins telling me what might need to change.

Early Envy painting in progress, with colour strengthening and the original arrangement of separate architectural forms becoming established.

4. Building the Original Envy

At this stage, I'm still developing the painting largely along the lines I originally intended.
The world is becoming more established. Forms gain strength, the landscape develops and the structures within the composition begin occupying their spaces with greater confidence.
This is normally the point where I would expect to feel increasingly certain.
Instead, something else was happening.
The more substantial the painting became, the more I found myself looking at the relationships within it rather than simply concentrating on finishing them.
Nothing was necessarily wrong.
But something wasn't quite right either.
And once I've seen that, I can't unsee it.

Envy painting showing the developed early composition before Julia O'Sullivan began reconsidering the arrangement of the city and landscape.

5. Something Isn't Working

By now, I have invested considerable time in the composition.
The separate structures are established. Colour is developing. The painting is moving forward.
Except, in my head, it isn't.
I keep stepping back.
Looking.
Questioning.
The individual elements work, but I'm no longer convinced by the way they work together.
This is one of the most uncomfortable stages of creating a complicated painting because there is an enormous temptation to carry on simply because of the hours already invested.
But time spent painting something isn't a good enough reason to keep it.
I had built one version of Envy—and realised I didn't want to finish it.

Envy during a major compositional change, with previously painted areas covered as the original separate structures are reconsidered and rebuilt.

6. Painting Over What I'd Already Built

So I began dismantling it.
This is one of the most important photographs in the entire Creation Gallery because you're looking at something that would become invisible in the finished painting.
Established areas are being covered and reconsidered. The separate architectural forms begin losing their independence as I search for a much stronger central structure.
There is always a moment of slight horror when you paint over hours of your own work.
But there is also liberation.
Once I've admitted something isn't working, I no longer have to protect it.
Sometimes progressing with a painting means having the confidence to destroy part of it first.

Reworked Envy painting with the architecture developing into a stronger central structure and the surrounding composition taking a new direction.

7. A Different Envy Emerges

Now the change becomes unmistakable.
The architecture begins drawing together into something much more dominant. The relationship between the city, landscape and foreground changes, and the painting starts developing a very different visual hierarchy.
This isn't simply an adjustment.
It is a new composition growing out of the remains of the old one.
And suddenly I begin believing in the painting again.
There is still an enormous amount unresolved, but the direction feels stronger.
The work I painted over wasn't wasted.
I needed to create that first version before I could understand why I wanted this one instead.

Envy painting in progress as the redesigned city, landscape and foreground are brought together into the new composition.

8. Making the New Composition Belong

Once the major change has been made, I have another problem.
It mustn't look like a major change has been made.
The new areas have to become part of the same world as everything that survived.
So I return to colour, depth and balance. Forms are strengthened, relationships are reconsidered and the revised architecture begins settling into the landscape rather than appearing to have been dropped on top of it.
The painting is no longer fighting its new direction.
Envy has stopped looking backwards.
Now I can begin pushing forwards.

First detailed stage of Envy, with the revised composition established and broad forms developing into smaller figures, structures and textures.

9. From Structure to Detail

This is where my way of working changes again.
The large compositional decisions are largely settled and my attention begins moving towards much smaller spaces.
Broad shapes start breaking into individual forms. Surfaces acquire texture. Figures become more distinct and areas that previously existed mainly to establish colour begin developing identities of their own.
The brushes get smaller.
The hours get longer.
And strangely, the amount I appear to accomplish in a day gets smaller too.
A few centimetres of painting can now contain an afternoon's work.

Envy painting gaining intricate detail as the city, figures and landscape develop into a densely layered narrative scene.

10. Envy Becomes a World

This is one of my favourite stages.
From across the room, the painting still reads as a single composition.
Move closer and it starts breaking apart.
What appeared to be one structure contains many smaller elements. Figures become individuals. Previously quiet areas begin revealing incidents that aren't immediately apparent from a distance.
This is when the painting begins acquiring the density I want from it.
I don't want everything to reveal itself immediately.
I want the viewer to discover that looking for longer changes what they see.
The painting begins rewarding curiosity.

Advanced stage of Julia O'Sullivan's Envy painting, with increasingly precise details connecting the city, figures and surrounding landscape.

11. Making Everything Connect

At this point, I'm no longer thinking about individual sections in isolation.
I'm travelling around the entire painting.
A colour introduced in one place might need a small echo somewhere else. An edge may need sharpening. Another may need softening. Something that has survived for months might still disappear if it suddenly feels unnecessary.
And now the compositional changes from the middle stages must become completely invisible.
I don't want the viewer thinking:
That was altered.
I want them to believe that everything belongs exactly where it is.
All those earlier versions of Envy are still underneath—but only I need to know where they're buried.

When Envy Finally Stopped Wanting Something Else

Looking back through these stages, Envy has one of the most revealing journeys in the collection.

It didn't simply become more detailed.

It became a different painting.

There was a point when I could have continued with the composition I already had. Hours of work were sitting there in front of me. It worked.

But I knew it wasn't right.

So I painted over parts of it, changed the structure and allowed another version to emerge.

Perhaps there is something wonderfully appropriate about that.

For so much of its creation, Envy was never quite satisfied with what it had.

Neither was I.

I kept looking.

Questioning.

Comparing what existed with what I could see in my head.

Changing things until eventually there was nothing left that made me want another version.

Envy finally had enough.

The photographs in this gallery preserve all those earlier possibilities—the paintings beneath the painting that nobody looking at the finished work would ever know existed.

But you've now seen them.

You've watched Envy change its mind, lose parts of itself, rebuild and finally become the painting it is today.

What you haven't discovered here is why.

Why these particular figures survived.

Why the city became what it did.

Why there is ice.

Why Envy wears what it wears.

Why Kindness appears as it does.

Why the Devil is there.

Or what all the smaller details scattered throughout the finished painting are really saying.

Those answers don't belong in the Creation Gallery.

They belong in the Artist Journal.

You've watched Envy become itself.

Now Read Behind Envy →

Jupigio-Artwork-Gallery

Rare - Unusual - Unforgettable

Creating Envy

The Painting That Wasn't Satisfied With What It Had

Watch Envy Change

When Envy Finally Stopped Wanting Something Else