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.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
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).
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