Yes, I said the challenge was to do a painting a day. However, the real goal is just to paint every day. I’ve decided to take my time with this one. It’s from a photo that I wanted to paint as soon as I took it several years ago. So it will be one step at a time. Tomorrow will be the greens. After that looking at it closely and making sure the values are right and that the other elements are working well together.
Today I decided I wanted to actually draw the subject I was going to paint. Sadly, I am very very bad about drawing on a regular basis. Next month that will be my challenge to myself. It took me hours to draw this and it still isn’t exactly like the photo I took, but it’s close enough that I don’t think my mistakes will haunt me as I paint it. That can be the case, though if you don’t get it right. It bites you in the butt when you try to paint it.
So it was a mostly good day, though one piece did not turn out as well as I had hoped. I use to be really good at feet. I’ve lost my touch. Just another reminder that I should draw more. The other piece unexpectedly WOWed! me. It’s not the least like my reference which you will see. I like the flow of it. As I talked about yesterday it’s been exciting me being very aware of how many decisions I make as an artists. This particular painting had a decision to be made with every brush stroke. Especially since I started the piece changing where the center of interest was. Well actually, I started by taking a picture of my backyard at night, then manipulated it with the “cut out” filter Photo Shop Elements.
Sometimes you can feel good just because you’re productive. And you should. As an artist, so long as you’re working you are learning and improving. I learned different ways to hold my brushes today. The thing that I kept thinking about was how wonderful it was to be an artist. I could make all sorts of creative decisions from start to finish. Now in this case I may have made some bad decisions. The trick will be figuring out what, where and when. That’s actually often the case if you have a less than successful piece. The first question to ask though, is “Why”. Why doesn’t the piece work? Is it only because you had different expectations? Is it one or several of the elements and principles that isn’t working? Then you can track down where and when. Today I completed two and got half way done with a third. I suspect the third will turn out better than the others. Maybe I’m just tired of abstracts. You might notice the composition in the last two is similar. I’ll go into more depth about that later. There will also be more in depth on the first one and it’s “mates”.
I didn’t paint yesterday and I don’t feel guilty about that at all. I’ve been good at sticking to my painting a day. In fact some days I’ve done THREE. So today, I am going to talk about framing. I do most of my own framing. I collect shabby chic frames and also look for good prices on new frames. These two examples are not my work, but illustrate the magic of framing. There is often more than one good option. In this case one gives the piece a very nice modern feel. The other harkens back to the impressionists. Both compliment the piece nicely.
I’m having so much fun and pretty pleased with my results as well. I often feel that painting abstracts is harder than painting reality. So much can go wrong when you don’t have a “guide” to show you the way. I’ve also felt that it’s even harder to paint abstracts in watercolor than other mediums. Partially because of its innate qualities, transparency and fluidity. Also because of Acrylics innate qualities – fast drying and opaqueness. I’m sure I’ll get some arguments about this. Today’s pieces were based on photos that were abstract to an extent. I still have to tweak the “Dancing Lights” and “Night Rain” needs its misket taken off. There will probably be tweaks needed there too.
Our sumi-e group, Hisshin (Spirit of the Brush) is one of my favorite art groups. It’s a small community who simply get together to paint. Each month one of the group does a presentation to teach us how to paint a particular subject. Today it was Poinsettias and I think I did pretty well. Sumi-e has been a struggle for me, but I still enjoy it very much. I thought I’d have a leg up since I am a watercolor artist. It’s a whole different animal though. The brushes and paper behave totally differently!
No, I’m not talking about the plant. My blog is about my art. Here is the one from yesterday that I tweaked some. I did two today because I’m not sure I’ll get a chance to do any painting tomorrow – other than the Sumi-e I do every second Thursday of the Month. My favorite day of the month! I did, however, prep two pieces with some frisket just in case.
So I discovered that I was posting to the wrong page. Evidently I somehow have another WordPress site that is sharedvisionsart.wordress.com or some such. Not sure why or how.
Yesterdays piece was not completed, though you can certainly see where it was going and how it would end up. Todays piece was also not completed ( too many extraneous HAVE to’s). It’s obvious this one was “done on the fly”. I will definitely post the finalized version of this, since it is NOT as obvious how it might end up.
These are 3 more abstracts that I did the day before yesterday. I used the good old “salt technique” for one of them. I often use 3 different types of salt – kosher, regular, and popcorn. Their different size crystals create more variety in the effect. I happen to love texture, so this is one of my favorite techniques. Like most things you can over do it. My favorite of these is “We Can See Eye to Eye”. The composition turned out better than I thought it was going to, unlike “Go with the Glow”. I did, however, enjoy the process while painting it. I made a point of using my watercolor brushes the way I would use a Sumi-e brush. It was very meditative.
