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Spring Leaves, 11x14", oil on canvas panel.
Well, today is another gorgeous spring day, and I'm lucky enough to be outside painting. I tried to capture the look of the sunlight coming through the young spring leaves on the small trees and bushes in this sketch. I think it worked rather well.
By the way, please feel free to leave critiques in the comments section. Much as I love to watch myself type, I'd like to see your thoughts too. I can take whatever cruel inhumane things you might have to say, so don't worry about my feelings, I've got a thick skin. And what's more, I'll use your comment to make myself faster, stronger...a better painter all around.
Wave Study, 5x7", oil on panel.
I'm attempting to get a better handle on what makes water look the way it does. Therefore, this is a small study of a tiny section of sloshing waves. Water is much more difficult to paint correctly than I realized.
Jones River Landing, 5x7", oil on panel.
Well, this painting is a cautionary tale about not letting the sunlight hit your palette and canvas. While this painting looks great in the bright morning sun on an early spring day, it looks miserable under the studio lights used to photograph it. All of the depth and color is sucked out of the blue, and generally it looks poor. Lesson learned.
Tomorrow is another day.
Atlantic Path, 5x7", oil on panel.
It's really turning into spring rapidly around here, and the greens are getting a little brighter and more vivid.
This painting was made on a footpath that runs along the coastline rocks. It's a great little feature of Rockport. Although this is technically private land, there is a long public footpath that stretches along the coast, allowing everyone and not only the people who can afford it, access to the natural beauty of the area. The paths are marked with small signs, but you kind of have to know that they exist, and in that way they're a great local secret. As my wife and I get to know the area, the more we love it.
I've also been having a conversation with Jerry Sumpter over at Überart about the need for opinion in art criticism and the ways to dissect the aspects of painting in order to evaluate the artist's achievement on each in turn. Morgan Meis at The Smart Set recently wrote about how art criticism has lost its ability to make proclamations on whether art is Good or Bad and he seems to be implying that currently the art critic's role is more as anthropologist in the mind-world of the artist. I tend to agree with him, and certainly the proliferation of different styles and avenues for visual art have made the dividing line between Good and Bad art increasingly fluid or at least difficult to define. The appeal of the art critic as interpreter is obviously strong, but it edges dangerously close to becoming a way to invalidate any criticism: any art is good art if understood on its own terms.
However, if one dismantles the artist's vehicle: message from form, technique from stylistic choices, one can evaluate each on its own terms and then reassemble them to form a critique that is not only takes the artist's point of view into account, but is also objective on each facet of the whole work. Do you agree?
View from Seaside Cemetery, 5x7", oil on panel.
Well, today I needed a change of pace, so instead of staying in my nice warm studio, I went out and froze my fingers to the marrow in the north wind off the Atlantic Ocean to get this little landscape. I'm pleased with the sky, but the land needs some serious work in my opinion. There are some pleasant things about the rocks in the foreground and I like the sea spray effects I managed to get, but there's a lack of focal point that makes it suffer a bit. I think I'll continue to do these landscapes this week and see if I can't get something more interesting by Friday.
Also, an interesting aside. As I was walking home, a nice lady from the town asked if she could see the painting. I said sure, and set down my easel so she could take a look at it. "Oh, it reminds me of California! I know where that is, I have that exact painting on my living room wall!" I really didn't have anything to say to that, but she finished up with, "But it's not like California today, is it?" And no, it most certainly is not. So I agreed with her and shuffled off. Any ideas on how to respond to the normally inane blather you have to deal with when people stop you when they notice that you're a -gasp- Painter?
Pearl Onion, 5x7", oil on panel. Purchase here.
Well, here it is, Friday's painting. I think this one is pretty nice. Everything turned out on it the way I'd hoped, so that's good. Also, a friend told me that the reason my pictures were so dark was due to the difference in gamma settings between Windows and Mac machines, so I've set the image to use it's own color profile, so let me know if the image looks better then the previous entries (if you're using a Windows machine, that is.)
I've also been reading some nice books on Velázquez and Rubens. The two that I find most interesting and useful to painters are the one on Rubens called Drawn by the Brush, and the one on Velázquez called Technique of Genius.
Great books. A little pricey, but you can get them used on Amazon for pretty cheap, and the information inside is well worth adding them to your library.
Hanko, 5x7", oil on panel. Purchase here.Here's a little piece which I think has a couple of problems. It's a little skewed in the drawing, and the color for the top of the hanko is poorly observed...or just too flat...I'm not exactly sure. I have to think this one over for a while, see what comes to me. I think I'll experiment more with this lighting setup though, as I've obviously gotten used to the two setups I've had until now: a spotlight and the light from the north window. This setup was a pocket LED flashlight on the table.
Dropper Bottle, 5x7", oil on panel. Purchase here.Good morning. Today's piece is a little green glass dropper bottle I have in my studio, and honestly it's a pretty subtle piece, with the details being very hard to discern in the photo. I veered a bit from the paintings I've done so far in that I put some of the background in. I think it works ok from a distance, (or in a small photo) but something about it bothers me up close...perhaps to takes too much attention from the main item, which is so subtle to begin with? I'm not sure I can place my finger on it just now, but if I do figure out what's bugging me, I'll post an edit for you.
Spring Leaves, 11x14", oil on canvas panel.
