Another quick study based on one of my photos, this time an open dumpster in the park. I just like the way it sat there, defiantly ugly and utilitarian, smack in the middle of our beautiful park. I also like the big white piece of styrofoam sticking out of it, like a blank canvas, not yet touched, but already destined for the landfill.
One of the followers of this blog asked why I was so reverent in my painting of the missions, and yet loose and freer when painting trucks or fruit etc. I didn't really have a good answer other than, "well, the missions are just big white boxes." It got me thinking, maybe I should try some faster and looser mission paintings. This is 9x12, so I used a bigger brush, and limited myself to 45 minutes. I think it took less. Not sure.
I'm gonna do a series of these. The reference photos are from the mission in the town of Sonoma.
Working a little bigger (8x10) and with bigger brushes, but still trying to get more of that looseness I'm getting in the postcard paintings. It's not easy. There's something that just clicks in the brain that says "this is more expensive than cardboard, so be careful". It's really a mental block I've got to work through.
I'm painting over a bunch of 8x10 boards that were just complete dogs. Trying out the bigger brushes this time. This looks terrible in person, but scrunched down to a little JPEG it's not so bad. Hmmm. I think I'll also need to start getting further back from the canvas while I paint.
Taking a break from the Easter Egg Hunt, Elizabeth sits in the sun and examines her basket (not shown). I'm really enjoying working small and quickly. Even though I'm using acrylics, I've been using the same palette for a week or so now. Makes breaking down a lot easier, as well as starting up. I just snap a postcard to my stand, grab the palette out of the fridge and go to town.
OK. It's a little more consistent in energy/brushwork etc. but it's still not working. Maybe it's just a bad subject for me. In the photo the far hills are actually darker than the near ones, which doesn't help with the portrayal of depth. There's so much I should have changed about the composition that I really should have picked a different photo.
This is the end of this series. Something different tomorrow.
I promise.
With a little of the already mixed color on the palette from yesterday, I did a quick, small sketch of what I had intended to do yesterday. The smaller size let me easily accomplish a looser more abstract of the shapes and colors. Something about the amount of paint and brush size just seem easier for me.
I watched Wyland last night, and he was using an entire tube of ultramarine blue for an ocean scene he was working on, and a 5 inch brush that looked like a house painting brush. I think that's what I'll have to try. Gulp.
This is another crack at that landscape that I was going to do more as an abstract, just to work on colors and shapes. I started out with a nice red stripe, then the yellow, the green and blue. But something happened and I forgot myself and 30 minutes later I had become obsessed with tiny unimportant details and had ruined the abstract completely.
I don't really know how it happened. Maybe because the page was so big, maybe the brush too small. Hmmm.
I will try one more time manana.
These are quick sketches I did for the Different Strokes assignment. I was hoping one of these would be the one I picked, and even though each has some OK spots, I wasn't really happy with any of 'em, so I redid the big one I posted yesterday. (I posted in reverse, because the one I submitted was due yesterday, even though I painted these the day before).
Some I did upside down, and the bottom right one I did upside down and from across the room, super fast. About 7 minutes. Just thought I'd post 'em for the fun of it.
For this week's Different Strokes challenge, the original photo is of a family at the beach. Too many humans for my liking, so I focused on one. Turns out so did almost everyone else.
The human form is a little more demanding than trees or barns. A disproportional tree still looks pretty much like a tree. This image is obviously a woman, but by getting just a few measurements wrong I've made her shorter (or wider) than she actually is. I don't generally have this problem in drawing, but paint is still just a little more difficult for me to manipulate.
Uncharacteristically I did a bunch of quick studies for this, hoping one of them would be "the one" but I didn't really like any of 'em, so I did this larger one instead. Maybe I'll post the studies tomorrow. Maybe.
