Watch Me Paint: World-Class Art, World-Class Instruction
“Keuka Lake Vineyard,” oil on canvasboard, 9X12 This year I am teaching plein air painting in two venues. I believe that all aspiring painters should study plein air. Why? Character: The strength of plein air painting lies in its relationship to reality, but that is also its greatest weakness. Slavish homage to what one sees …
“Loren’s farm,” oil on canvasboard, 12X16 At our last painting session, Marilyn whipped out her grayscale markers (making me instantly regret that I hadn’t brought mine along). The forest was remarkably dark and moody this week, and the spring foliage far less advanced than down on the lake plains, and I was finding it difficult …
Continue reading “Some Days, You Just Can’t Get Rid of a Bomb”
Cloud moving in over Oxbow Outlet, Oil on canvasboard, 16X20 I stopped to see my pal Jamie Grossman last week, and we fell into a conversation about sketchbooks. We both use them religiously, but (unlike Jamie) I tend to use the cheapest sketchbooks available and fill them with scribbled notes. Ever generous, Jamie gave me …
In church This is the second year I’ve bought into the Sketchbook Project and then felt my muse desert me as soon as the package arrived in the mail. It’s ironic, because I carry a sketchbook everywhere I go, a habit that started in elementary school. My school notekeeping was a total fail from an …
Nude, oil on canvas, 40X30 This commissioned work is a formal portrait of a mature woman who desired a nude painting reflecting her Central American heritage. The client wanted an impression of the beauty of a woman not matching the clichĂ© of the commercialized American ideal of willowy, leggy and fair female imagery. The composition …
Neko-nabe, or fat cat in a dish, 8X6 oil on canvas An ellipse is a plane curve with two foci which is symmetrical on both the vertical and positive axes, and intersects with these axes perpendicularly. I recently heard a student tell another one, “She means not a racetrack and not a football.” Works for …
Girl falls into fountain while texting, 6X8″, oil on canvas And the steps to do it, in about an hour: I start with either a watercolor pencil drawing. Easily erasable with a wet paper towel, allows me to fiddle endlessly with composition. Then I block in colors and values, very roughly. Then these shapes are …
Continue reading “Internet meme of the day–girl falls into fountain while texting”
Here is my set-up along the shingle. Well, dang me, I managed to delete my own painting from Rye from my camera. (That’s what I get for photo-editing when overtired.) Hopefully, the Rye Record will have a copy of it. However, my experience at Rye was (as it seems to be every year) wonderful. I …
A Pool With A View (Cunningham Rd) by Bruce Bundock 32″ x 20″, Acrylic Today I’d like to write about an artist who also did the Rye Painters on Location this weekend: Bruce Bundock. It takes an extraordinary mind to see the beauty of Tyvek, T11 siding and an above-ground pool set serenely in Eden. …
The Adoration of the Magi in the Snow (1567) Pieter Bruegel the ElderOil on wood panel, dimensions not availableOskar Reinhart Collection, Switzerland This Nativity by Pieter Bruegel the Elder is the second picture I am considering with my pastor friend John Nicholson at The Shepherd’s Staff. John’s from Alabama, where today they expect a high …