January 31 - Learning Time Again! Painting Lesson!

Learning time again!  Major changes to bring to you in today's painting, continuing the 12 x 12 oil from yesterday. Some very important things have happened, and I hope I have enough "room" in the message to share it with you! Note how I changed the packground, dividing up the rear space and more effectively placing the figures on a stage with a backdrop. Viewers are more comfortable when  given the illusion that the scene is "contained" for their intimate perusal. The shadowed wall behind, and the openings create that illusion. I cobbled together the new packground from other source photos taken at Del Mar Race Track. Love that tourquoise which is their color!
I have attached another image as an extremely important aspect of painting, demonstrated for you in taking this stage of the painting and manipulating it in my photo editing program. I took out all the color, and flipped it over, with the prime purpose of showing you how important abstract structure is (created in values). Structure is the skeleton of the artwork. Look at the placement and the relationships of the darkest values to the lightest values. And also note that although the background has openings in the wall, they are very close in value to the wall itself to convey the illusion that the wall and openings are further back in the picture. When you look at the upright, colored one, the values don't look that close back there!  I share this with you because one thing I find with many artists is a lack of understanding of how crucially important creating a strong value structure is to the end painting.

January 30 - Back to Equine Painting!

Time to go to the equine art again, and also time to incorporate some of that earlier experimentation with the thick paint on this 12 x 12 inch oil!  I'm bringing you the start drawing, and also the source material, so you can see what inspired my starting this one.

Perhaps the passing of Barbaro (the race horse) brought this out, but the reference is of a vet or trainer doing a flexion test on the left foreleg of a race horse. The groom and perhaps the owner or assistant or trainer are looking on. The background in the source is booooring, so I'll have to spiff that up a bit, and I am moving the left-most figure so the "action" in the middle is more easily depicted. I also do subtle relocations of shapes to make better design. Lots of loose drawing at this stage, no value issues, no color issues ... YET!

January 27 - Sunset Color Study

A quick color study to capture the light of an evening's sunset, reinforcing the arrangement of values to make a believable scene in two dimensions. The sunset tonight wasn't as spectacular, but we do have gray skies--hopefully some rain in the forecast. And I woke up this morning discovering some muscles I hadn't used in a while being quite sore from yesterday's ride. The mare was mighty quiet today, too! 5 x 5 Acrylic for $100

January 23 - Puzzles for You to Solve

Here's a bit of a pickle for your entertainment today! This is an on-location painting that I started over a year ago, and found while looking for another piece that had been bought. This 12 x 16 inch oil has some really nice things going on in it, and some unfinished areas (like the palomino horse) that still need work. I know what I'm going to do to finish this piece, and I'm wondering if you have some ideas as to what I've decided to do, and more importantly...WHY. If you'll write back, I'll compile a list of suggestions to go out in tomorrow's email with the finished painting. So please share in your thinking about what YOU would do if this was one you needed to finish up.