I’m paddling with my daughter and her two children. My grandson, Jacob, is enthralled by the water. He leans over to drag his hand through it. My daughter, Sarah, grabs his pants to keep him from falling in.
Some might say this painting is too impressionistic. I disagree. To me, painting is like singing while photography is spoken. This event was a musical moment and was expressed that way.
Note the mirror images below the canoe with lines going through them to give the impression of water. The reflections of trees on the shore are expressed by streaks of yellow, green, blue and orange. The sky is reflected in the bottom left corner.
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On my blog of June 25th you see the beginning of a portrait from a demo in the class I teach. In that one I taught the students to draw the face in, then the shapes of the values and colors. I had them mix three values of skin color, dark, medium and light. From there I had them paint in the values as they saw them on the model’s face. You see the results in the picture on the left.
The painting on the right is from the next class when I took the portrait further. I painted the iris of the eyes, the dark pupil, then a dot of white for a highlight. That dot is what gives the painting life. Next I worked on the color in the eyelids and lips. At that point I brushed some hair color and red in the cheeks.
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I’m fed up with trying to paint like others want me to. I’m tired of the central Indiana art scene. The only way to make it with them is to paint barns. You have to use the same exact techniques. You can’t tell the difference between one artist and the other. Their paintings fill the local galleries and gather dust. From now on, I’m going to paint what I feel like and how I feel like. I don’t care if I ever get into another show or sell another painting.
This painting was done with pure emotion. I just let the juices flow. Look at it — she’s got feeling and presence. Look at her eyes — you know she’s thinking. She’s surrounded by her work.
I entered this in the state fair. A local type judge didn’t give it the time of day. I thought that it was a failure. Then someone told me congratulations. I had won the Governor’s Choice Award. They had come in after the original judge. I got a huge ribbon. The painting hung in the governor’s mansion. At a reception there, the First Lady, Judy O’Bannon, told me how much she loved it.
So there.
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In my art class tonight I taught my students to look for the shapes of the values, whether light, medium and dark. I had them draw the individual values shapes, then paint in the color values in each shape. The painting on the left is my demo. This technique give dimension and life to the face.
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Brian’s mom was excited because he discovered his niece. She wanted me to paint the wonder he felt in his eyes when this happened.
There are some techniques I’ve used that were fun for me. I actually painted Brian in a green undercoat, then put skin-tones over it. The carpet was red so I painted it that color, but put strokes of blue over it to give a shadow effect. Notice the colors in the white clothing, also the blue in Brian’s hair.
This painting was done in an expressionistic manner to match Brian’s unique and wonderful personality.
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