Being a professional artist can kill the enjoyment of doing art. It seems like with deadlines for art shows, commissions and teaching classes makes it work, not pleasure.
Tonight, though, I decided it was time for just me. I grabbed a fresh canvas, set up a quick still life and lit it with a lamp, then relaxed for an hour. I just wanted to enjoy myself.
This is what I came up with. My technique is to separate everything by shapes and values first, painting them separately. It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. In this painting you’ll also see reflections of the apples in the pot, as well as highlights. The pot looks metal, but when I was painting it you would have thought I was just painting stripes. See, it works! And I even had fun!
Filed under Artist Tips by on . 6 Comments. 
This is a value study from one of my earliest college art classes. We were to find a picture in a magazine then paint the same picture, but we were to use different colors but paint them in the same values they were originally in. For those who don’t know what that means, the value of a color is basically how light or dark the color is. The true test to see if we had done the painting correctly was when the instructor took a black and white photograph. If it looked right, we had done the values correctly. Mine succeeded.
Filed under Artist Tips by on . 2 Comments.
I’d spent the morning with my three daughters. We had fixed breakfast over a camp stove in Brown County State Park. After we ate, we threw the Frisbee around. Our next destination was Nashville. There were a lot of fun shops and galleries to check out. By this time we were starved. We stopped at a little restaurant for lunch.
I tried to create the mood by not being too photorealistic, but more impressionistic. Jennifer, on the left, is reflected in the mirror to the left of her. Sarah checks out the menu, while Nicole enjoys visiting. I painted the window a whitish yellow and matched the same color in Jennifer’s hair, showing reflection. It continues down to the table below it. To the right on that table can be seen the reflection of the chair below it. Sarah and Nicole are lit up on their left side by the window with a shadow on the right. The painting shows the cozy warmth of being sisters together.
Filed under Oil Painting Technique by on . 2 Comments.
I had the great opportunity to study under the fantastic artist, Paul Davis, at the University of Utah. His classes were the hardest of all my college experience. I was so overwhelmed most of the time. Now, many years later, I am grateful for his strict teaching methods.
This was one of his assignments: we were to go home and draw our self-portrait for our class the next day. I sat in front of the dresser-mounted mirror in the bedroom. You can see from my eyes how intensely I worked. You can see the facial structure and planes of the face.
Yes, I was bald then. I had dark hair though. Now I’m still bald, but have almost white hair and a full white beard.
Filed under Drawing Technique by on . 4 Comments.
I was with my son on Tybee Island just east of Savannah, Georgia. We had our fishing rods and were walking along the pier when I looked down at the beach below. I noticed a group of girls sunning themselves. They were all facing towards the center. I thought it really made an interesting sight. I knew I wanted to paint that scene.
The first thing I did when I drew the figures was to have some of them go off the edges of the canvas. I have found that this technique makes the scene more interesting than if they all were completely shown.
Another thing I did was to portray different skin tones. Some were pretty tan, others were lily white. The sunlit parts of their bodies had highlights, while the other sides were in shadow. If you look at the girl on the bottom right side, you will see color from the green towel reflected on her leg.
Filed under Oil Painting Technique by on . 4 Comments.
When I first moved to Indianapolis over ten years ago, I wanted to try painting some city scenes. There are four parks all in a row along Meridian Street downtown. I found a beautiful fountain with a sculpture of a woman playing cymbals at the top, and a group of people dancing around in a circle. Water ran from under the feet of the cymbal player and went over the sides into a bowl below. I thought it was wonderful. I especially liked the view of the War Memorial building right behind it.
I went early in the morning because I wanted the light to be just coming up and shining on the subject. I soon found that it only was good for ten or fifteen minutes and then the sun was too high. I went back on several successive days to capture the fifteen minutes. It was really tricky trying to capture the water. It moved too fast for me to get a real view, so I had to do my best. I wanted to have the painting be much further along than it did, but I started getting harassed by panhandlers. One of them shoved my easel over on the ground and then he slugged me. That was the end of my painting on scene downtown. Actually, though, I like the slightly unfinished look, anyway.
Filed under Oil Painting Technique by on . 3 Comments.
My son and I have never once, that I can think of, had a disagreement. We really get along well, and have done so since he was born. I think it probably is because I always took him fishing. We’d get up early in the morning, load the canoe on top of the car, and drive up into the mountains. We had a few favorite lakes we loved to fish at. Not only did we catch several thousand trout, we had time to talk, joke, and tell stories
Here is Jared with a rainbow on his line. Note the sunlight is coming from the left side of the painting. There is a sliver of light on his arms, face, leg, and life preserver. The inside of the canoe on the right side of the painting is red, while the left side is dark. There is reflected light from the orange life jacket on his face. Small portions of the trees have sunlight on them, but the rest is in shadow.
Filed under Oil Painting Technique by on . 3 Comments.
Recent Comments