Jun 6 - The Workshop for June and that Still Life

"When in doubt, paint it out," I said a few days ago. This 30 x 24 has been sitting on my easel since then, asking for attention. Today, after the workshop was over, I invited those interested to stick around and see how this would be changed. Most opted to continue painting after a great idea of pizza delivered to the door. They are dedicated!
So I redesigned the structure on this painting, now using the Golden Open acrylics instead of the traditional acrylics I started with. Fun, juicy and fast painting! Here I'm blocking in the lower half, and I glazed over a lot of the upper half with yellow ochre and gloss medium.

I redrew the plates and the vase larger and expanded the floral portion to more properly balance the composition. And just approached it as though it were differently composed in the first place. I like it better already!

The workshop is going well, with ten Color Boot Campers delving into nuances of the Color System, and taking control of their painting decisions, instead of letting the source material drive their work. It's refreshing to see the new paintings coming off their brushes! More tomorrow, and perhaps one or two will let me use their work in an email to you.

The second image is what the floral looked like after I did the major surgery with the brush and painted OUT the lower two thirds. Hey, I painted it once, I can do it again, and probably better. So it goes.

You can see my entire blog HERE.
My workshop schedule for 2009 is HERE.
Color System information can be found HERE.
If you need to email me directly, please click here.

June 2 - Paintings gone Wrong and Beauty Elsewhere

Uh oh. Some times an artist forgets what they're doing, and I'm happy to report to you that this painting is becoming a great teaching example of that!

Those lovely grays are gone now, and I caught myself getting so enamored with the small white rose, that I forgot one of the things I stress with students, "Don't rush the focal point!" So although this painting has some good things going on with it, I have a feeling that it is going to undergo some major surgery shortly.

Hey, this happens to all of us. But most of 'em arteests aren't courageous (or stupid) enough to share the ones that aren't going so well with the general public. I've had an epiphany of knowledge that I'm a teacher first and an artist second, so I see the greater good in sharing ALL the issues with painting, and that includes problems. Since I took this last image, I've painted OUT the lower 2/3 of the canvas. Gone. "When in doubt, paint it out." So it goes. See, I, too, have to slap myself up side the head and put myself back on track. The painting will get much better because of it. After all, "it's just paint".

On another note, here's a bit of beauty from my yard... after I took the image of the picket fence, I walked up to the front patio, turned around and took this second image over the koi pond to the rose garden. I love scenes like this... it may end up as a painting, too.

You can see my entire blog HERE.
My workshop schedule for 2009 is HERE.
Color System information can be found HERE.
If you need to email me directly, please click here.

June 1 - Continuing with the Acrylic Still Life

I'm still covering the canvas using only the cool colors--the whites you see are the canvas itself, which flies in the face of my normal procedure of toning the canvas. But since the source material is so harmonious and subtle in coloration, I wanted to use the whate canvas to "keep the sparkle" as I continue to develop the shapes.

Yes, not a BIT of warm in here yet, and the harmonies of color are really pleasant. I'm using the "Trifecta" of the sky trio with white to create all those areas of gray variations. All you Color Boot Camp Graduates will know those!

On the rest of the canvas, I'm just putting in the general shapes of the things--such as the grapes and the plate shadows. There is a bit of pure on the vase now, in the shadows on the left. Ultramarine and white. It looks so warm and advancing because with the Color System, if you use a cool color solo with just white added, and surround it with other cool mixes that have two or three others combined, there's an optical illusion created. That illusion makes the purer colors advance, and appear warmer. Can you see it?

On other news, I'm clearing out the workroom for the June COLOR BOOT CAMP here this coming weekend. Twelve people are going to fill their heads and canvases with the time of day system that seems to be revolutionizing painting for people who want good color, every time.

I'm putting in a white picket fence around my rose garden this week--here's an image of it in process. OK, all the stereotypes about "houses with white picket fences" come to mind, but I've always loved pickets and roses, and now I have both right outside my studio windows. Life is good. But then we also have a swarm of bees that came into the back yard this afternoon, so maybe not. A local beekeeper is coming by this evening to take them for his hives. That's the best for the bees, and they'll be gone before they can get hungry and testy.

You can see my entire blog HERE.
My workshop schedule for 2009 is HERE.
Color System information can be found HERE.
If you need to email me directly, please click here.

May 31 - Starting the Still Life in Acrylics

This is a 30 x 24 canvas, and the first lay-in of the large shapes is presented for you in this lesson on painting a still life using the Color System.

These colors are blends from the cool box, and create a harmony of related hues, and every one of them is at least two hues from that box. There is NO pure color at this stage. All of the shapes that are going in are going to play background roles for the coming layers.

I'm also attaching the photo of the setup I'm using, as this is from life. Sometimes the setup and arrangement of objects is just as important, if not moreso, than the actual painting! This is set up in my studio to the left of my easel, and is lit with one 50 watt halogen spotlight. I chose these objects from my "stash" for their unity of color and analogous relationships. It will be fun to see what happens with the Color System and my brushes!

I hope you'll enjoy the journey through this painting with me...


You can see my entire blog HERE.
My workshop schedule for 2009 is HERE.
Color System information can be found HERE.
If you need to email me directly, please click here.