Saturday, January 12, 2013

Parrot and Apple



10 x 8 Oil on Linen Panel

This is my personal birdie, Sambuca.  She's quite photogenic, and although I'm sure these birds are as common as our pigeons, in the Congo, I think she's exceptional.  And beautiful, so of course it's been my intention to paint her.  I adopted her when she was 6, and she's been with me for 8 years, so she's a teenager going on two. Bird people will know what I mean.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

What I learned...


11 x 14 oil on canvas panel

I was fortunate to receive a very constructive critique, and I had no trouble seeing everything that was pointed out.  Perspective?  What a novel idea!  More than one center of interest?  Why sure! Too similar spaces between objects? But, but  - that's the way it looked in real life!  I could also see I had typical sky values reversed (lighter at the horizon is how nature generally does it), and several pointless blobs.

Why would I post this you ask? Because if there's just one person out there who is going through the same learning process and a light bulb goes off, then showing the warty ones (which I haven't been shy about doing before either) has a purpose.  Also, I hope to look back a year from now and shake my head in wonderment at how far I've come.

Most people would just start over, but at this beginning and experimental stage of landscape painting, I wanted to see what changes would do with the existing painting underneath, so I grabbed my paints and started painting over this and that, and adding what I thought would improve the composition.  Of course I made a mess of it.  Some areas got positively muddy, some disappeared, some that were there for 'who-knows-what-reason' held their place or got painted away, but the composition was improved!  A tidge, even though there are still two centers of interest - or maybe 3.  Onto the trash heap this goes and on to the next one.  And I'll do my thumbnails before I start painting next time.

I purchased 36 horrid sloppy rough canvas panels, and decided to use them for a learning project.  (Don't buy the Everlast Wood Panels on Closeout at Jerry's Artarama, but do check out that store, because it's a good one).