A blog about painting plein air and studio landscape.
Dear Readers,
Fall is hear, and I’m busier than… well, words escape me. I’ve been wanting to get out and paint. I finally did Saturday morning. It’s a nice little 5×7 of a tree that I’ve painted before this time of year. I’ll get the new one scanned and post both of them so you can see the yellow tree revisited and how my style has changed over the years. Hopefully it’s improved too.
Have a great day,
Don
Hello Reader,
In my last post I talked about how I was skiing at the Conservation Department, and soaked in the view. I’ve painted the view from memory. It’s almost finished. I just need to add a few clouds, then give it a once over to see if I left anything else out or need to fix anything.
I’m still reading Bob Rohm’s book, and he was talking about pushing the limits of the color scheme. Greens of summer are a good example of a scheme to push, make the scheme a little bigger and add some yellow, or orange, and gray down your greens, natures colors are grayer than our tubes of paint.
So, with this latest painting I tried Bob’s advice. You will get to be the judge if my painting is a success or not. So far, I like it.
I did try one other experiment with this painting. I’ve used a new palette, new to me anyway. I’ve stuck to a primary color with warm and cool colors for each primary, plus white, and Burnt Sienna. So far I like it. I did switch back to WS Oils too.
As crowded as my studio is, I’m looking forward to being able to paint in it once again. Right now I keep my art stuff behind the wood stove in th kitchen, haul it out and put it up after each session. I giving serious thought to cleaning my studio, and selling some RC airplane items that I don’t use any more.
Well, it’s time to feed the wood stove, and get to work.
Until next time, keep your brush on the canvas!
Donald
Dear Reader,
I picked up a book in a book store the other day about “Color.” At first I thought, okay, is there anything new under the sun dealing with color? I’ve read about all the different color schemes and color mixing, and have painted a lot of paints using color. But in flipping through the book, I did pick up a couple of items that maybe useful, so I bought the book. My darling wife will be giving it to me for Valentine’s Day in a couple of weeks, so I’m looking forward to reading it and I’ll let you know in my book review what I think. I’m not a fast reader, I don’t have a lot of time, so it may be something you get to look forward to as well.
The one thing that caught my eye was along the same line I’ve read before. Painting color thumbnails, just quick little color sketches that gives the artist an idea of what colors to use and where in the painting is a good idea. The author went one step farther, and she recommends using different colors in the corners. I thought back through all my paintings, and I try to do that in the sky, but in the foreground, I will often have the field of grass extend from one side to the other with one color. So, I’m going to be trying this in a few of my paintings and you can be the judge about how well it works.
Until next time, keep your brush on the canvas,
Donald
Dear Reader,
In 2007 when my wife and I started the adoption process for our daughter, I wrote a children’s book. Lately I’ve been thinking it would be great fun to push myself as and artist, and to gry by trying to illustrate this book. I started a thread in the Illustration forum of Wetcanvas asking for recommended reading. One person said that illustrating isn’t much different than painting fine art. He maybe right. I do not know since I’ve never illustrated anything before. He gave a very convincing argument. Taking his words as words of encouragement, and buying the two books that have been recommended, I will attempt to illustrate my book.
To be honest and open up my most inner self, I”m more than a little nervous. I don’t like failure, and the good Lord knows I’ve had a lot of that in my life. But I’ve learned that failure can be twisted into success. Okay that may not have worked like I wanted, but I can learn from it and now I know something that didn’t work, so I’ll try again. This attitude has helped a lot with painting. I learn from painting bad paintings, and they become exercises so it’s OKAY if they aren’t master pieces. So it will be with my illustrations.
To me there is a big difference between Fine Art and Illustration. Fine Art is a painting where I paint what inspires me. My story is to show you, through paint and canvas, what I find beautiful. If you see it and like it great, if you buy it and hang it on your wall, that is icing on the cake. I love it when people love my art enough to want to see it every day and hang it on their walls, in the past, the money just helps to buy more art supplies, but now it is going towards the adoption of another daughter. Illustration on the other hand requires that either the painting support the story, or that the painting shows a portion of the story. The demands are higher on the artist to create a painting that does more than just shows what inspired him or her. The concept and color scheme, value plan, composition and other parts of the painting must be given more thought.
In reading to my daughter, and son before that, I’ve seen some beautiful illustrations, and been totally amazed at some of the art work found in children’s books. My fear is I’m not up to the task I’ve set before me. First of all, I’m horrible at painting people. So, it was a surprise when a fiend gave me not one but two books on painting people for Christmas, THANK YOU DAVID T.. God knew I was going to need them. So, not only have I set a goal of illustrating my book, but learning to paint people. The hardest task for me will be to learn to draw the same person from different angles and still have it look like that person. This is where I admire my son’s artistic skills. But then he has been an artist his whole life, and studied, drawn, and spent many hours drawing people, while I’m just getting started.
Well, it is time for me to go to work and earn some money to support my art habbit… 
Have fun painting!
Donald
Dear Reader,
Barry Jon Raybould says ‘he spends 90% of his time doing painting exercises, and 10% on his master pieces.” Other artists I’ve read about say, “If a painting turns out to be a flop, it’s an exercise, if it turns out great, then it’s a master piece.” It doesn’t matter which way you approach art, the important thing is that you must practice and paint exercises if you want to improve. Art is HUGE! There are so many different aspects to it to master, a person could live as long as Adam or Methusala and never master every aspect of painting. Yet artists do manage to master some areas and produce the occasional master pieces. Each artists must decide for them self what area they wish to improve. The areas they chose effect their style, and helps with their artist’s voice.
With improving my artistic skills in mind, I’m going to work on a series of paintings. I did something similar with the thread “Different Starts,” where I took the same photo and used different methods to start the painting. The difference is, with this series, I plan on using the same outline drawing, and see how many different styles I can paint it in. Examples of styles I will use are:
and I may think up a few more to try along the way.
You’re welcome to join in the fun, here is how I plan to get started.
I’ll be posting my finished paintings on my blog for your enjoyment. I do have to finish my current painting before I begin this series of paintings. In the mean time, grab your easel and paints, and be adventuresome, and go out side and try a plein air. It can be addictive, I know I’ve been missing it with all these fall colors, I’ve been longing to be outside painting.
Until next time!
Donald
