One of my concerns was how do I get people from different photographs to fit into the same painting. I had already learned that the shadows need to be consistent or I would need to retake the photo. I organized my photos according to activity and placed them in plastic coversheets in a three ring binder. This kept me from shuffling through stacks of pictures. I next made a list of potential painting topics. That was influenced by the pictures that I had. An example of this would be the tall Cyprus. I took the picture with a friend standing at the base to get a perspective of size. This tree is hundreds of years old and was struck by lightening in 1985. The reason I took the picture was for the fact it was along the trail when the Choctaw actually walked their “trail of tears.” It later became the central background of the “Trail of Tears” painting. The figures were from a re-enactment of the historical event. The next step was to draw the figures in my journal. The drawings then were photocopied in various sizes. I was like putting a puzzle together as the drawings were shuffled around on a scaled down background drawing of the Cyprus tree. After playing with the figures a compositional pattern would begin to emerge. When the composition was set the figures were taped down. Small thumbnail value sketches were made of many of the drawings to see how that affected the focal point. This saved much time later when it came to painting, by realizing that certain values were actually going to distract from the focal point. The composition set the format of each painting. After seeing a show in my locale where all the paintings were the same size, I was glad I made that decision.