Creating s sketch of your subject allows for additional creativity and expression in your painting. A sketch in itself might become a finished work of art. Learn to sketch by hand. This video will inspire you to do so.
Below is the final painting.
By now you likely know the importance I find in just playing,” doodling” sometimes I call it. Just put that brush to canvas and see where it takes you. That is how the following painting was born. I was continuing to explore the Real Camelhair brush variant in the Oil Category of Corel Painter which will sample multiple colors. And so I “dipped” into blue and white and started to twirl – creating a “Van Gough” sky. And then yellow and more blue. OK – fun – time to form land. Waves of green began to form a hill side, and then the reverse then gave depth and perspective. Perhaps there should be trees, I thought, more twirls formed the trees and then the apples. Apples started to fall to the ground and to roll to low spots. Perhaps there should be children gathering them, I thought. Little girls appeared, two of them more interested in the collecting than the other – who read her book. I thought of body positions, sitting, reaching, bracing on a hillside. I was able to do this quickly and fluidly – I am always amazed when this happens. And so this cheerful illustrative painting came into being.
And so it goes sometimes, when I put brush to canvas.
Spring 2012
I don’t know when New York has had a winter such as the one past. There was a freaky heavy snow this past Halloween. I was in town at that time as well. I found the beauty but was not inconvenienced by it. Back again, to experience an early full blown sun lit Spring. I spend many of my days at the museums. Yesterday I saw the Gertrude Stein collection at the Met. A couple of days ago, I viewed the Diego Rivera exhibit at MOMA.
Since recently taking a class in painting street scenes, I must say that I have been looking at the people, traffic and buildings in New York in quite a different way. After leaving the Met a few days ago, I walked wistfully down 5th Ave. Central Park was across the street from me to my right and I sought to hug any strip of shade I could find next to the buildings which flanked me to my left. Suddenly I came upon a courtyard with two cherry trees in bloom. A high fence beautiful ornamental wrought iron fence shielded the property from the public. I stuck my iPhone through the , however to snap a couple of images. An interesting perspective, I thought. This is the resulting painting. I like it quite a lot.
I have been creating beautiful portrait paintings for my clients for many years now. However, I have been very conservative with my brushstrokes. My clients have tended to want a more smooth look in their painting – or perhaps that was simply my projection. I think I will begin to veer away from this from time to time. Skin will always be smooth but I can create greater expressions within other aspects of the painting. The following is one such example. The response to this painting has been very favorable. Ultimately, I want to make my clients “thrilled” with their portrait and I will always stay with in their comfort level.
A new 4 week class has begun with the Digital Art Academy focused on painting street scenes. We were all given the same reference image and allowed total artistic flexibility in how we developed our paintings from the image. It was wonderful to see the range of artistic expression amongst all in the class. Off course no one else painted people in different clothing nor created duotone paintings. I think I have been watching too many historic European movies.
See how I visualize and compose a painting, Add impasto texture to your painting. This video demonstrates these processes.
I bet you never heard the term “negative” painting before. I had not until today – in my online class with Skip Allen, my watercolor instructor at the Digital Art Academy. There was quite a bit of discussion about this term. First of all it is a watercolor term, and it refers to painting in the negative space, the space which surrounds the focal point of your painting, to give the subject of your depth and luminosity. That as opposed to doing substantial positive painting on the subject of the painting itself. Am I being clear? Hopefully looking at my finished image helps. In case you are interested, Skip gave us references of a couple of watercolor painters who do “negative” watercolor painting,
This process started when Karen Bonaker, instructor at the Digital Art Academy, mentioned that one of my paintings reminded her of Klimt with all of the gold on it. I thought I should go further and created this piece. The video allows me to share my creative process.
The world may not have needed my landscapes and portrait creations – but I created them anyway. I was there in 2008 and I am still selecting and painting images from that trip. I must say that the beautiful light Italy is known for hid itself during the days I was there. It was overcast and the light was very flat for the most part. It is fortunate that we now have such excellent software to pull out image detail and fortunate again for me that I can paint. I am including here a collection of mainly of paintings but a couple of my favorite enhanced photos as well. If you have not visited Italy, I hope these paintings and photos encourage you to do so.
