Kate Protage

Right down the road Right down the road

How do you prepare to start a new painting? First, I take hundreds and hundreds of photos…enough to merit their own external hard drive! Then I plan my paintings in Photoshop. Some people keep a sketchbook, but Photoshop is my sketching and planning tool: I spend hours cropping, changing colors, cutting and pasting pieces of different photos together. The end result isn’t very pretty, but it works for me. After that, the drawing and painting begin.

How do you find inspiration? I find inspiration every time I hit the streets at sunset. The colors that unfold around me as I’m driving home on a typical Seattle evening are often so breathtaking that I’m tempted to turn around and head back to the studio…or at the very least, pull out the camera and take pictures.