“picking apples” finished

I finished the painting of my daughter picking apples last week, so I thought I’d show the finished painting.

This was a fun one that came together very well. I was mainly interested in communicating the light, having a correct drawing, and having fun with thick paint and more abstract brushstrokes.

Here are a few detail shots showing the texture of the piece.

I’m consciously striving for a looser feel. It’s a higher plane of painting when everything is “correct” and reads well, but the technique appears to be effortless or, dare I say, even casual. Trust me, you can’t pull this off by painting casually. Thought and care needs to be put into each stroke so that as much as possible it’s correct when and where you put it. The end result is a painting that feels fresh, free, and interesting but still accurately communicates.

picking apples

Started a small piece featuring my daughter picking apples. I took some nice shots in the fall and it feels good to be getting going on this one. I’ve been having a lot of fun with technique too, painting more loose and thick. I’m probably a little over half done, and I’m very happy with it so far. Hopefully it will finish out nice.

gonna call ‘er done

Well, this has been a fun one, but I think I’m ready to move on to some other ideas. I’ll probably still tweak on it a little because one can always find something that doesn’t look quite right, but for the most part  I think it’s done.

I had planned on painting this one a little looser, but it didn’t quite turn out that way, but i think it has some interesting passages in the grass. I like the thicker, more painterly strokes.

redneck roots

No, I’m not wearing cowboy boots and humming a country song as I write this, but I do drive a pick up truck, (whatever that’s worth) and every once in a while I like to circle back and revisit themes that used to be more prominent in my paintings. One of the more prominent of those historic themes being wildlife art. A genre in painting that took a justifiable downturn in marketability a few years back due to prints, and limited editions that weren’t very limited, and everybody and there brother picking up a camera and an airbrush and calling them selves a “wildlife artist.” I was one of those peeps years ago, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that good art was good art, no matter what the subject, and that most of what occupied the genre was as cheesy and gimmicky as one of those choreographed teeny-bopper boy bands.

But what can I say, I’m an outdoorsy type, and many of my artistic heroes still would be classified as “wildlife guys.” Guys like Carl Rungius, Bob Kuhn, Luke Frazier, Ken Carlson, and Robert Bateman. These are painters that understood what good art was at its foundation and simply chose to depict animals and their habitat to communicate their vision. They are master draftsman and students of anatomy and movement.

So I decided it was about time I embrace my pick-up-driving, camouflage-wearing heritage, and paint a deer:)

In all seriousness, I’m a whitetail nut. They are a fascinating and beautiful animal, and it’s been years since I’ve painted one, so I guess my challenge is seeing whether I can bring anything new to the table that would vault this piece beyond the average cliche of wildlife art. We’ll see. I’m about half done, it looks mostly there, but I still have a ways to go. Hopefully can finish it up in a week or two. I’ll post again when I’m finished.

“First Hint of Color”

That’s the title of this one: “First Hint of Color” Here’s a video of the work I did in studio to finish this piece up. I actually touched it up a little after the video, so the pic at the bottom represents the finished piece.

I learned a few things on this one. This was the first piece I can remember that I used NO photography. And I noticed it. From a purist’s perspective I like the idea of no reference photos. It’s romantic to say this was all from life and from memory, but from an artistic standpoint I missed having photo reference. As happy  as I am with this one, and I am happy with it, I think it could have been stronger with the incorporation of some information I could have gleaned from a photo. Just little details and variety.

I’m also going to do something a little different with this one. I’m going to offer it for sale first here on my Etsy shop. So if you enjoyed watching the process and you’d like to purchase this piece, check it out. If it doesn’t sell there I will be approaching some galleries with it.

Thanks for stopping by and watching!

A good start

It’s a beautiful September day and I decided to head out with the easel and see if I couldn’t get some painting in.

I brought the video camera with me to document the process. I figure it might have some entertainment value.

Now I’m not a videographer by any means, so don’t look for much in that area, but I’d like to do more with video as a means of sharing the process. Sorry for the glare in the middle, just a bad angle, and my battery died towards the end, hence the abrupt ending:)

I’ll be finishing this piece in the studio and I’ll post a video of that when we get there.

small works show

The Kelley Galleries hosts an annual “Small Works Show” that I’ll be hoping to get in for the first time. The two dimensional pieces are required to be under 144 square inches unframed,  thus the name of the show.

Here are the pieces I’ll be entering. The vertical is 9×12, the panoramic landscape is 6×20, and the other two are 8x10s. I’ll find out in a couple weeks whether I made it in, and then the show runs October 10-23.

What’s wrong with this painting?

The post title is a little deceiving, because I’m not sure I could say there is a lot “wrong” with this one. In fact I could call it done and take it to a gallery and they’d most likely gladly put it up for sale on their wall. Not long ago that would have been fine with me, but I’m getting pickier:)

Are the colors and values correct? Mmm…sure, not bad. Is the composition ok? Yeah I’d say it works.Does it communicate what I intended? Yep pretty much. So what’s the problem?

Well I guess once I reached this “perfectly fine” stage, I wanted to ask “what can I do to make it strong, and not just fine?” This has to do with orchestrating a painting with he viewer in mind. How can I control where the viewers eye is drawn? How can I keep the viewer’s attention within the painting. The answer to these questions is relatively simple. It’s the getting to the point artistically where you’re mature enough to ask the question that is difficult.

The answer is what I call “orchestrated contrast.” The viewers eyes will be drawn to the darkest darks, the lightest lights, the sharpest edges and the strongest color. So the solution is to make sure those elements are centrally located in the painting, or at least located around my subject, where I want my viewer looking. With this painting, a simple landscape, I’m happy just to have those things centrally located in the painting, to keep the viewer “in.”

So what did I do?

Well, I added some darker accents (the darkest darks of the piece) in the central tree shadows along the edge of the field. I added the lightest accents in the field up against those new darker accents. I made sure that field edge where the lights and darks meet is a sharp, crisp edge by using a knife to lay the darks in. I strengthened the color of the pink cloud wisp on the lower central portion, again to keep the viewers attention in the middle area, and darkened the top of the sky to make the central area look brighter. And I added some more saturated color above the middle trees in the distant sky and strengthened the cloud edge there too. All these things are meant to keep the viewers attention in the core of the painting and give them a sense of focus and subject. It’s subtle, but makes a difference.

Here’s the final painting with a side by side comparison below. (before on the left, after in the right)

I hope you can see the difference on screen.

wooly bully

Well I’d say i’ve putzd on this one long enough and we’re going to call her done.

This is a Scottish Highland cattle. My buddy and I were driving around last summer and came across a picturesque farm with a few of these guys out in the pasture and we had to stop and see if we could get a closer look. The farmer was very gracious and gave us full opportunity to do some photography and study these interesting little guys. They are indeed little. I would judge them to be roughly half the size of your classic milk cow. They were actually pretty grumpy as well, which I got a kick out of. The farmer said at one point when one got close to the fence where I was standing, “Careful, he’ll hook ya.”

Anyway, I enjoyed doing this one, there’s a lot of character in that face, and there happened to be pretty nice lighting when we stopped that day. We’ll see if anybody is brave enough to put something like that on their wall:)

what the…?

What would we do without changes of pace? I know i’d be an unhappy painter without them. I started one tonight that’s somewhat of a departure from recent subject matter and starting technique for me. Dove right in with a broken and somewhat random technique. I haven’t worked to much like this before. It makes the process interesting I guess. I’m hoping to bring portions of the piece up to a refined, finished state, and leave other areas rough and abstract. I’m appreciating more and more that type of work. It makes for a much more visually interesting work, which after all is what this is about isn’t it?

Who knows how it’ll end up. Here’s some process photos from tonight’s session. I’ll talk more about the subject when I post the finished piece.