Daily Painting: Improving your daily painting skills

 

Balsamic Vinegar 9" x 5" Oil on linen mounted to panel.

Available in my Etsy shop

Close-up

Just under 2 hrs.  

Limited palette consisting of white and black, cad yellow lt, perylene red, ult.blue, transparent oxide red and phthalo green to get that pure transparent green of the bottle.

 What a fun bottle to paint, can you tell the brand? Probably not, unless you use it regularly. I really didn't want the details of the label to over power the overall painting. Squinting and the time limit was key to keeping the details out of focus. Also, I used no soft hair brushes,  just some good old worn out hog bristles.

Painting of the Day: Focusing on Mood

Lemon on Blue 5"x7" Oil on linen mounted to panel

Available in my Etsy shop

 

Boutique Onions  5"x7" Oil on linen mounted to panel

Available in my Etsy shop

Simple and straight forward.

Here are two little 5 x 7 painting I did on consecutive days. Both took just under 1 hr. to complete.  With the  Lemon I was after contrast and color intensity. I really wanted the lemon to "pop". So it didn't seem pasted on the background, I pushed the yellow into the background and vs versa. I had fun with the glow around the lemon. With the onions,  I was after a much more subdued look. I kept the contrasts down and stuck with general earth tones.

 Both paintings have a nice balance of thick and thin paint.

Still Life Painting of the Day: Radishes

 Radishes 8" x 12", Oil on linen mounted to panel

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The title of this post is "A Painting a Day" However, I actually didn't paint this one today, I painted it several weeks ago. I think it turned out quite well. I spent about 2-1/2 hrs. It's hard to go wrong when your subject contains such a color complement. Also, it has a great juxtaposition between the abstract shapes of the green leaves and the geometric shapes of the actual radishes.

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I've been thinking about the idea of "A painting a day" for quite some time now. But it's only been the last month or so that I've been able to practice it. My plan has been and will be to paint a small study every morning (well nearly every-I'm not a robot). With a set time limit and from life only. Focusing on still life and the occasional landscape.

So far, I'm really enjoying the freedom, spontaneity and challenges. But most of all I'm enjoying the fact that I can simply call it done in less than 3 hours. That has been very liberating to say the least.

No mater what else I paint for shows and galleries I will continue to paint these little studies in the morning and sell them online for a very reasonable price. With each post I will cover more about my process and thoughts that go into them. 

Painting Demo at Scottsdale Artist's School

 

Getting a likeness with no features

This is a demo I did during my week long workshop at the Scottsdale Artists' School, April, 2014.

As you can see I didn't get very far, but believe it or not I accomplished my goal. The main principle I wanted to impart was that features are not really what makes a portrait look like a specific person--it's the big shapes. During the week, this study was seen by many people and everyone who saw it knew instantly who the model was.

Students: So think about that the next time you're painting a face. Try to paint it with no features then step back and ask yourself if it looks like the person you're painting. 

 "...If you work on a head for a week
without indicating the features you will have learnt
something about the modeling of the head." --J.S. Sargent

My second goal was to work with temperature to turn the form because there was a very tight value range in the face. Meaning, other than the darks in the eyes and hair and the highlights on the skin there were only two values. So that gave me a lot of room to play with color variations that were in the same value range. Sorry the photo really doesn't show those little variations- it's a bit blurry.

The other major principle I discussed during this demo were edges and how powerful they can be in drawing the viewer's eye to the center of interest.