$89 unframed

6×8 oil on canvas panel Had so much fun with yesterday’s exercise, I grabbed another earlier painting. I looked for ways to bring the color more into tune, and create more visual excitement. Well, I need to get on to the paintings for my show in February. See you tomorrow.

$89 unframed

6×8 oil on canvas panel I have a number of goals that keep me focused on developing the things I want to improve in my painting. One is to develop my ability to paint with a loose, directness of paint application, but very careful observation and organization of design. Now and then I like to set-up something that’s just way too complex to try and render. Here, I’ve crowded my small set-up box with a number of things and then tried to make order of it. Painting this way forces me to pay attention to the important decisisions, like shapes and edges, value and temperature, background and foreground. The goals I set for myself are often the motivation for what I will paint in order to get there.

Realistic goals: Beyond your grasp – but within your reach. (Anonymous)

The goal is not to be concerned with the reconstitution of an anecdotal fact, but with the constitution of a pictorial fact. (Georges Braque)

SOLD   

8X6 oil on canvas panel    Always a fun study to play simple complementary colors against each other, varied by light and shade. So, when I decided to paint this beautiful Fuji apple, I went looking for a blue-green backdrop, and placed the apple on a black mat board for accent. I like the effect of making one of the pair a grayed neutral versus the other bright and strong. The strong needs less area to be balanced by a greater amount of the neutral. It’s what happens to both in the light and shade variations that brings the magic to painting.

An artist finds his happiest combination in a play of complementary colors. They are direct contrasts yet do not jar; they awaken the beholder, but do not disturb him. (Charles Burchfield)All colours are the friends of their neighbours and the lovers of their opposites. (Marc Chagall)   

$89 unframed

6×8 oil on canvas panel I didn’t think there was time to do a small painting today. Everyday is a juggle right now. I have several things asking for my attention: paintings for a gallery show that opens in February, teaching, cleaning-up this blogsite, shipping, correspondence… I’m not complaining. I realize you have the same experience in trying to budget the time available. At one point in the morning, my schedule took an unexpected change. Suddenly, a bit of time was open. At the top of my things left undone “to do” list was “paint and post”, so I decided to take action. I grabbed this little vase, stuck the flowers in it, put it on the stand, clicked on the light and started mixing paint. I thoroughly enjoyed painting as fast as I could go, and I’m pleased with both the exercise and the result. Now, I’ve really got to get on to the next thing! Be back soon.

In terms of art, the only real answer that I know of is to do it. If you don’t do it, you don’t know what might happen. (Harry Callahan)

It is better to paint for one minute a day than to think about it for 24 hours a day… (Andrew McDermott)

He not busy being born is busy dying. (Bob Dylan)

SOLD

8×6 oil on canvas panel Here’s one I’ve been looking forward to painting. My subject here is not the pull toy. Simple forms, bright color, light and shade, fun subject. These suit my taste. Still, I admit, this little guy has a charm of his own.

A painter’s tastes must grow out of what so obsesses him in life that he never has to ask himself what it is suitable for him to do in art… (Lucian Freud)

not available 

16×12 oil on canvas panel How difficult it is to see a thing with clarity and simplicity! I try to begin a painting holding a vision in my mind of what it will look like when it’s finished. The discipline comes in not getting lost along the way to the finish. Here’s the reason for daily painting! Anyone can learn to paint pictures, but the real enticement is to show you what I see.

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see. (Edgar Degas)

The way we see is critical to understanding how others will read our compositions. (Mike Svob)

Seeing is a gift that comes with practice. (Stephanie Mills)

SOLD

6×8 oil on canvas panel Yes this is a re-paint from my painting of 11/08/07. This one has bothered me since I first posted it, and being short of time to paint today I decided to see what I could do to improve it. Always there’s the struggle. If you have no struggle what you’re making isn’t art. Conversely, of course, just because we struggle doesn’t mean we’re making art. However, the struggle is necessary. My paintings mean enough to me that I want them to be the best I can make them. As time goes by, what I didn’t originally recognize as a problem often stands out as in need of revision. It’s often worthwhile, and satisfying, to make the revisions. These revisions aren’t apparently major, but I feel they’re significant. Can you notice them?

It’s not the struggle that makes us artists, but Art that makes us struggle. (Albert Camus)

Just knowing what areas one may struggle with takes the demons out of the dark and allows us to get a better handle on them. (Laury Ravenstein)

not available 

16×12 oil on canvas panel. This is the third version of this painting. The first was painted small and on location. It seemed full of unrealized potential (as do so many of my plein air studies). I painted it again in the studio, and showed it to one of my galleries. They took it and sold it rather quickly, but I was still unsatisfied with it. Here I am trying again, and this one, I think, is more successful. It’s interesting that in learning to paint we really don’t have anyone who can tell us if something is good or bad. Not in a way that would help us to know the difference, anyway. All we can do is step out and risk it on what we feel is the best we can do, and see where that leads us.

Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good. (William Faulkner)

Risk is a necessary part of painting. You have to put yourself in harm’s way in order to stretch your competence and continue to learn. (Thomas M. Nicholas)

8×6 oil on canvas panel I’m not sure I’ve correctly spelled the name of this type of pottery . The sun was hitting this in such a nice way, and the shadow cast onto the wall made an interesting echoing shape. It’s painted rather hurriedly, and I’ll probably see things I wish I had done to it, tomorrow. But, that’s today’s painting. I thought I wouldn’t get one done today. I had so much work to do in several areas. But there’s time to do the work we love the most, and when we’re doing it, it doesn’t seem like work at all.

Do all the work you can; that is the whole philosophy of the good way of life. (Eugene Delacroix)

If you work it will lead to something. It’s the people who do all of the work all the time who eventually catch on to things. (Corita Kent)

Actually, I was tagged on the 23 of December by Dean Haven, but didn’t discover it until this morning while cleaning up loose ends on my blog. Sorry, Dean, I’ve had my hands full and it just escaped my notice. Funny thing is, as I visited other peoples’ blogs to admire their work, I would notice all these folks getting “tagged”, and thought, “I doubt that more than four or five people even know I have a blog.”

I realize that the way “wildfire fads” run, I’m probably the last person in the blogosphere responding to a tag. So, whomever I list will have already been tagged, and I apologize beforehand. I just don’t have the time to do the research to discover who has not been tagged. So, if I have included you on my list it is to let you know that I watch your blog, and admire your work.

Rules: 1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog. 2. Share 5 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird. 3. Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs. 4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Hmmm… what can I tell you?

1. I’ve been married to my lovely Lasca for 35 years.

2. I became a grandfather on December 18th, my grandson’s name is Lasco.

3. When I was six years old I jumped off the roof of my house holding the four corners of a bed sheet, thinking I would drift gently to the ground. [wrong!]

4. I was at Woodstock from set-up until the end, and regardless of how the movie or nostalgic, gleamy-eyed freaks might try and portray it, accept for the music it was wall to wall chaos.

5. I, who once cared nothing for Jesus Christ and religion, now love Him, own Him as my Lord, and cherish His very name. (I still don’t want anything to do with religion.)

This takes a chunk of time! I should be painting. With apologies before hand, I’m tagging (knowing you’ve surely already been tagged, but with great admiration): Abbey Ryan, David Darrow, Todd Ford, Carol Nelson, David Malan.

$195 unframed

11×14 oil on canvas panel This one was done from an on location value sketch, written notes and several reference photos. I won’t be putting this one on eBay, but I will leave it here with the price shown for anyone interested.

Recently, Brendy Vaughn (a wonderfully colorful painter) commented on one of my landscapes (Early Fall) and mentioned, “I so want to be able to do landscapes but just haven’t been able to get them to look the way I want. Practice, practice, practice I guess.” She’s right, of course, about the practice part, and going outside to do it is the best way I know of. In my answer to her comment I wrote about one approach I enjoy,

“You might try out quick value sketches of a scene that catches your attention. Then, write notes on your sketch describing color, light/shade, or whatever seems to be important to you. Shoot some photos both near and far to remind you of details you want to include. Then, back in your studio, build the painting from that experience and give it your own special emphasis. The memory and imagination work together to provide the simplification of what often overwhelms us when we’re on the site.”

Painting on location is great fun and extremely challenging. With practice we can learn to come home with rather nice, fresh and complete painting statements. But this approach helps to develop the observation skills and editing that needs to take place in order to escape the frustration of being overwhelmed with what’s before us. Try it sometime. You may be very pleasantly surprised.

If you work from memory, you are most likely to put in your real feeling. (Robert Henri)

Imaginations blossom amidst memories. One judiciously separates them – but is there really any point in that? Doesn’t truth suffer when one amputates it from its context of dreams? (Jean Helion)

$345 unframed

16×12 oil on canvas panel This is the finish of a painting I was doing for one of my galleries. However, I changed my mind and didn’t include it.  It was a lot of fun to paint, and I especially enjoy the effect of the simple complementary color relationship. I’m working on three others that need to be ready by the end of the month (two more 16×12’s and a 24×30), and will have to do my best to also have something to post here. The others will be landscapes developed from field studies. I’ll show you the larger works as I go along.

SOLD

8×6 oil on canvas panel I woke up in the middle of the night, and was thinking about what I’d like to paint today. It crossed my mind that I recently became a grandfather. That reminded me of the fact that I have saved the building blocks that my dad made for me when I was a kid, which my son also played with. Funny how many hours of fun these old blocks have brought to a child’s imagination. Now, he’s a father, and I’ll pass them on to him (after I’ve played with them once more, for a bit). Anyway, it occurred to me that they may be fun to paint. They were. However, they were surprisingly difficult! They turned out to be a wonderful study in hue, value, chroma relationships. I also wanted to try painting with thick, juicy paint, which although it is a lot of fun, introduces different problems in controlling things. I think I learn best when things are just a little out of control. Isn’t that sort of what fun is about?

The desire to have fun during the painting process opens up the mind to producing interesting brushwork. (David Lussier)

If painting weren’t so difficult, it wouldn’t be fun. (Edgar Degas)

Do what you can, where you are, with what you’ve got. Break the rules, be different, be dynamic, but above all, be yourself! And have fun doing it! (Paul Dixon)

$89 unframed

8×6 oil on canvas panel This is really fun and interesting painting these saturated colors. I picked up a stack of colored papers the last time I was at the art supply store to use in my still life paintings. I’m enjoying carefully coordinating color schemes as a motive for experimentation. Some work better than others but they’re all fun.

Well, it’s New Year’s Eve. Here’s wishing you a wonderful coming year. I hope to get to know many of you better in the months ahead. I’ll be here with new paintings, and new additions to “The Depot”. I hope to post my first in the coming series of interviews with daily painters. Stay tuned. If you have suggestions about who you’d like to know more about, please let me know.

What works for one artist doesn’t necessarily work for another - try anything and everything and go with what works for you. (Paul Dixon)

You will have to experiment and try things out for yourself and you will not be sure of what you are doing. That’s all right, you are feeling your way into the thing. (Emily Carr)

SOLD

8×6 oil on canvas panel This is one that I put up without the time to write about it.  I sent it off to eBay for auction, and before I could come back and write something it had sold.  Woo-hoo. Thanks for the encouragement. I really enjoyed this one, from the idea to the execution.  Glad to know it found an admirer.

$89 unframed

Our interpretation is more important than what we are looking at. Just because the painting looks like something does not mean that it is successful. (Tom Lynch)

The person viewing your work has no idea what the scene really looked like, nor do they care… (Mike Svob)

SOLD

6×8 oil on canvas Phew! We’ve had a house full of people for awhile, and today was my first chance to get back to painting. My wife handed me this paperweight she recently received, and said “Why don’t you paint this?” I said, “Okay, thanks.”, and placed it in my set-up box. I had no idea what I was getting into. Talk about a puzzle of values and structure! I scraped this down twice trying to figure out what I was doing! It crossed my mind more than once to scrap rather than scrape, but it would have bothered me to leave it undone. So, for better or for worse, here it is. I can tell you it was an excellent workout for observation. The subject forced me to observe in greater detail, and I feel like I’ve done my observing push-ups for today.

About two-thirds of the effort that goes towards the execution of a painting can, I am sure, be attributed to observation. (Lionel Aggett)

Extreme observation serves artists very well - perhaps it is the best teacher. (Cynde Roof)

SOLD

8×6 oil on canvas panel       Daybreak, after a shower.

SOLD

8×6 oil on canvas panel So many shapes and values! Something must dominate. How important edges are! Hard, soft and lost. They do so much to integrate the design, bring a focus to the composition, and suggest the illusion of space. What’s the right color to use? What we see is always incredibly complex. No matter how we paint, the task is always one of simplification. There is just too much to deal with, so we prioritize, design, compose.

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity. (Doug Horton)

Out of intense complexities, intense simplicities emerge. (Winston Churchill)

SOLD

8×6 oil on canvas panel A gray day sunrise, in very limited color range. At times it’s useful for me to intentionally limit my options. Doing all I can with a few pigments is a stimulating exercise in color thinking, and gives me a chance to explore new color options. In this case I chose the complements, thalo green yellow shade and alizarin crimson, a warm vibrant modifier (cadmium orange) plus black and white. Once I had all the color related on the canvas, I didn’t feel limited at all.

I play better tennis because the court is there. (Robert Frost)

Creativity… requires limits, for the creative act rises out of the struggle of human beings with and against that which limits them. (Rollo May)

not for sale 

6×8 oil on canvas panel Yesterday I mentioned how I’m noticing that making bright, intense color work in a painting usually requires a foil of dark neutrals. This second study illustrates one way this happens in nature, as the colors leave the landscape and return to their source. Seems that the sun draws all color back to itself in increasing brilliance as the last tips of the trees are drained of their bright hues. It was a fun and worthwhile study in arranging shape patterns, values and hues. A closer look at how things work is a useful exercise, if you’re trying to infuse your own work with better understanding of what you’re doing. I’ll be applying what I’ve found to my upcoming still life set ups.

Plagiarize, plagiarize, / Let no man’s work evade your eyes, / Remember why the good Lord made your eyes, / Don’t shade your eyes, / But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize. / Only be sure to call it research. (Tom Lehrer)

Research is an organized method for keeping you reasonably dissatisfied with what you have. (Charles F. Kettering)

Research serves to make building stones out of stumbling blocks. (Arthur D. Little)

not for sale

6×8 0il on canvas panel Here’s one of the sunset landscapes I mentioned. Neither of which will go up for sale. I stole them from portions of a painting by David Koch, whose work I greatly admire. When I do studies like these, they’re for my own learning process and not for the money. So they’re not signed or available. I copy from work that I admire, now and then, for the sake of a close look at things I want to incorporate into my own painting. Also, I find it useful to identify exactly why and what it is that I’m studying, and then try to do it my own way. Trying to make a literal copy is boring work. It was great fun putting all these glorious colors together, but the tendency is to way overdo it. Anyway this is what got me started experimenting with trying to use the high saturation colors. Making it work requires restraint. If all the colors are strong and bright it’s just chaos. Darks and neutrals are the necessary contrast.

Plagiarism is necessary. Progress implies it. (Isidore Ducasse)

Steal from everyone and copy no one. (Charles Movalli)

SOLD

6×8 oil on canvas panel These are fun to set up. I started with an analagous color scheme featuring the yellows. I couldn’t resist putting the violet accent color in the shadow when I was finishing. I also tried painting this without much refinement, since I want to practice getting it right and leaving it. I want to learn to keep it fresh and avoid painting out some of the nice accidents that come with spontaneity. This only comes with long practice, and I know I have a long ways to travel. But I will arrive one day at a time.

The spontaneous is the most beautiful thing that can appear in a picture, but nothing in art appears less spontaneously than that. (Jeff Wall)

The most difficult part of creation is keeping that freshness, that spontaneity that looks as if a painting “just happened”. (Anne Adams Robertson Massie)