More of England

After I quit painting my wild and crazy version of Cambridge, I decided to go wild with brushwork but stay truer to color with a painting of Windsor Castle. The goal was to show a soft view of the castle but not too fairy-tale. It is 8x12, and I ran out of time in class, so this is what one hour produced:

I under painted each block of color in its complementary color. So the castle was a yellow, the front tree was purple, and the green tree was red. My overall color scheme would be considered purple/yellow although it almost goes purple, green, orange.

Sometimes It Just Doesn't Work

I was working on the painting of the canal that I posted earlier, but despite help from my teacher, it is one of my fails.

There are a lot of things that worked for it: the composition led the eye pleasantly, the colors provided  movement and contrast, and there were a lot of areas of complementary color. I also think the brushwork to the right of the paining was pretty good. But there was a lot that just didn't work for me. I could have kept working it, but I gave myself permission to give up. Maybe one day I will go back and start over with looser brushwork.

I have to admit it was fun to colorize Cambridge, UK! There was not a day of good sunshine when I visited, so if I want color, I have to invent it.

Impressionist...Maybe

In my last post, I talked about how I tend to consider my art impressionist or realistic abstract. But I'm not following any rules of a style (there is enough struggle with rules of composition, value, color, etc.). So I'd probably name the two seascapes below as realistic abstract and the following as impressionist (because I tend to get the "Oh, it looks much better from a distance" comment on these). 

 How do you classify these or your own art styles?

Impressionism...Color

When asked what kind of art I like, I usually say impressionist, or as time goes on realistic abstract. Both to me mean that the art will be something recognizable, but not realistic. Painting, to me, is an opportunity to edit the colors to create the feeling of the place because I often find that photographs are much duller than the feelings of happiness or beauty that I feel at the time.

That works sometimes, but sometimes that it difficult to do. I sometimes have trouble seeing the possibilities, so I decided to use Photoshop to colorize the photo I'm working from and SEE the underlying colors.

This photo was taken in Cambridge, UK, so you know that the colors were nothing like this! But I've found it helps me see the undertones. It also helps me see the color of the light.

Painting as Meditation

I'm getting ready to move, and my house has been full of craziness. To rest my brain from this stress, I've been burying myself in painting.

I'm still painting some bluebonnets. So let me clear the air about a myth...There is a myth that it is illegal to pick bluebonnets, but it is just a myth. Don't believe me, see here. DPS says it is legal, as long as you don't pick so many that it is defacing public property and that you don't trespass onto private property. So, I consider my 4 bluebonnets okay. (P.S. They last a long time. 1 week later, and they are still happy in the pot. They just slowly leach the blue out. Now they are a pale sky blue.)

They look quite dark for bluebonnets, but I painted these from real life, and when I squint down, these are the colors I see. (The picture washes out the lighter portions too much for good balance.)

Also, I worked on a large size ocean abstract that is very calming for me to paint. And I started some more ballerinas. (These are unfinished, but you get the idea.)

This last one is the one I am most proud of how it came out. Painted it from a picture on the Internet, but modified it a bit. (I prefer not facing people, so I keep a look out for backs of people.)

Light in the Dark--Value

This week, I worked on a portrait of my son. I took the reference photo with my iPhone, but it took it when it was dark with just the table lamp shining on his face. It obscured most of his face and left fun shadows to play with.

I've really got to do my research on taking better photos of art! But anyway, this piece is a good example of value changes and contrast creating excitement.

Part of me really wanted to define more facial features on the left, but it was so dark that they weren't really apparent. I think it gives it some appearance of mystery.

Now, a problem I did run across is that I worked with a lot of glazes. I also didn't use white in the darker areas of the painting. This meant that most of the colors were very transparent, leaving the work streaker than I wanted. To correct this, I spent some time an arms length away using a long brush to add touches of thick, opaque color. I even had to borrow some better art supplies from my teacher because my student-grade (I'm only buying professional grade as I run out) burnt sienna and burnt umber were too transparent.

It's Not What You See

"What screws us up the most is the picture in our mind of what its supposed to be."

Good advice for life and art.

That was the theme of my art this week. I was attempting to paint the bridge in Little Rock that is historical, sitting in front of the modern Clinton library. The only problem is that we visited during spring break, and although the daffodils were blooming around Arkansas, the plants near the bridge weren't. Add that to a cold, gray day, and I didn't have much to go on.

It provided me an excellent opportunity to experiment with kicking all the colors up a notch. I was going for full-on colorist approach. Nothing was going to be realistic.

Okay, so it looks better in person. The photo also cuts off the bottom which repeats the orange. And I put that wonderful quote there too!

Cobalt Turquoise, Magenta, and Orange do wonders for making this bridge exciting. My class enjoyed seeing me break out of the normal. I'll probably try again down the road with some more muted tones. We'll see!

The Problem With Grass

No, the problem with grass is not that it keeps growing, although that is a problem if you have to mow! (I am all about xeriscaping  myself.) The problem I am talking about is painting grass. It can be gosh darn frustrating.

I have found that over time I have often avoided large fields of grass, or even one color of flowers (if we aren't doing at least semi-abstract) because getting the right texture without painting all the leaves has seemed hard. I watch my teacher whip out grass by scrambling her brush around, and it still looks like grass. For me, nope, it tends to look like a mottled background or a child's picture.

Having said all of that, I tackled it in this week's project.

(Please excuse the photo, it wasn't flat when I photographed it.)

One layer in, and I was already happy with my mountains and water. Can't you just see the mist!

It took 2 layers to get the man right. And I love those pine trees on the side of the mountain, a little blue in them really made them work.

But it took about 5 different layers to work on the grass, including one point where I had to leave the room just so I wouldn't have to look at the painting for a few minutes because I was so frustrated. Yes, it was that bad. I began to wish that I had just left the foreground very abstract.

But I didn't.

I kept going, and I have to admit, it turned out alright. I can see that the hill in front is in the foreground, and the rest of the mountain fades back. I would have loved to add a few more pops of color and excitement, but I decided to stop while I was ahead. No use throwing in some new colors and having to start that grass over!

Mixed Media

Several students in my class are into mixed media these days. Scrapbook paper is having its heyday. Some of the most amazing artwork has come out of these students, so I finally decided I needed to try to experiment with it...only I took it a step towards wild, literally...

Before I leave Texas (I am moving out of state in a few months), I decided it was time to embrace the state flower: the bluebonnet. It has long been a staple of landscape painting, made famous by Onderdonk. He really made Texas landscape painting its own category.

But when I told my class my intentions, I think most of them rolled their eyes. Every Texas artist sooner or later tries to paint them, and most of them are not considered to be successful. If not trite--a field with the requisite live oak, then there is significant criticism about the right color of the bluebonnet.

It seems I have entered a minefield.

I actually started painting a truck that I wanted to be surrounded by bluebonnets, and I ended up leaving it in a grassy field.

I still plan on painting this gorgeous old thing in the bluebonnets, but it is just a glorious mess of lights and darks for the moment.

On a picture that could definitely be considered trite in normal circumstances, bluebonnets along some railroad tracks, I decided to loosen up.

I started with some wood grain paper and peacock feathers paper. I had a clear vision of an "X" composition. Then, I needed some texture. What I decided to add had everyone in my class pulling over each student in the class to ask, "Guess what she used for the texture?" Can you guess?

Roots. I had a dead plant and pulled the roots out of the pot, dirt and all.

I began glueing them in with thick gloss medium, but I realized it was going to be difficult to work with because so many of the roots wanted to stick out, more 3D than I liked, so I applied a layer of gesso that would also allow me to paint without constantly loosing my texture and dirt to the ground.

Next came the paint.

At least it kept it interesting.

Two more, not mixed media but some good texture:

In a Fog...Painting & Results

I recently posted about some of my successes. Now, I'm going to post about a less successful painting...

I love bright, bold colors. Dramatic contrasts. Paintings like my ballerinas exemplify that. However, I know that to evolve, I need to learn softness and subtle changes. After visiting the Houston's Monet & the Seine exhibit, I decided it was time to give it a chance. Monet painted a lot of soft winter scenes, where the main color is white.

Every color is softened with white.

I decided to practice using a photograph I took on a trip to Carmel. It was a cold day, and there was a mist in the air. The water appeared more gray than blue. But what I loved about that day is how the yellow flowers in the field glowed through the otherwise grim day.

The first issue I had was the color scheme.

This photograph didn't naturally lend itself to one of the color schemes. My teacher suggested yellow and purple. I understood her reasoning. The yellow would contrast and glow, and purple for mountains and mist is pretty common. However, I just couldn't see it and feel it. Thus, I did a couple of studies.

One is in purple and yellow. The other red, blue, yellow. The red, blue, yellow spoke to me. (I may still go back one day and try with softer purples, but we'll see.)

The next issue I had was making that soft, misty feeling of the fog. I needed to keep my colors muted with lots of white, the greens muted with blue, and keep all the edges soft. One of the main problems I keep having is mixing subtle changes in color, whether it is for these soft edges or for skin color. In that way, I was a little more successful with this painting.

I achieved softness, but I lost a little depth. I had trouble defining the foreground without losing the softness. Also, I think the yellow competes for attention with the red roofs. If my goal hadn't been to make those flowers glow, I think the painting would have been more cohesive.

Anyway, another thing I learned from the Monet exhibit was that even he felt the need to keep painting the same scene again and again. He painted studies and pieces of things before he got it the way he wanted. And he often just painted the same thing in different ways and with slightly different colors schemes. One sign at the exhibit said that Monet went out one day to a bend in the river with something like 10 canvas. He painted the same scene from the first scintilla of daylight until the final shadow of the evening fell. 

I guess if I make this painting 10 times, it will improve...

Crossing a Boundary--My own Degas

I crossed a boundary recently. I finally produced something that surprised me at how well it turned out.

I love Popular Photography and Backpacker magazines. I found a lot of inspiration from these photos. A winning photograph in Popular Photography was of some ballet dancers waiting behind stage. The photographer altered the photos digitally to make it look more like a painting than a photograph- a bit Degas.

Although the photograph was one large spread, I decided that I liked the photograph split according to the pages of the magazine. I painted one of the blue ballerinas, and I’m working on another of the pink ballerinas.

I think what caught my attention was the dramatic lighting. I like the light falling on the dancers’ skins and the dark background. I also love the photograph for the dancers of different sizes.

Abstract Beach Scenes- Using Leftover Canvas

During the Winter Break, I found some Christmas canvas leftover from a project. My kids and I had made several Christmas themed sayings and trees last year, but they didn’t make it through the storage without incident. I decided not to hang them this year. I looked at these four square canvas and thought about using some gesso on them. Since we had used scrapbook paper on the Christmas crafts, I decided that I needed to add some more texture to them. Thus, it was time to experiment…

Here, you will see 3 square canvases. (Number 4 was a throw out. Awful color. Awful composition. It just didn’t work and ended up with papers sitting on it.)

The simple beach of 3 stripes was just experimenting with texture and color. A peer in my art class had used something similar as a background, but I wanted it to stand out.

The beach with orange fish is based on my love of scrapbook materials. I used water-look scrapbook paper, sandy-look pages, and the fish. The water and sand got painted over, but I let the fish stand out.

The third painting is based off something I saw on pinterest. I loved the ocean color and wanted to work on the composition.

Now, the fourth painting I pictured here (the rectangular one) is an abstraction of a picture I took in St. Petersburg. I liked the composition of boats, but the light did make for a very interesting water. I am hoping to add some sea glass to this picture as the sails.

My overall take is that underpainting in warmer coolers has significantly improved my abstractions. It makes them more interesting and cohesive.