What's a Good Artist?

What does it take to be an artist? 
Well, it takes a desire to create art, and the initiative to act on that desire. If you've ever drawn a picture, molded clay into a form you've imagined, glued paper scraps into a collage, or in some other way have designed and assembled a creative work, then you ARE an artist. 

What does it take to be a good artist?

 Some would say it requires a Bachelors or a Master's degree in art, and yet one of the world's most well-known and best-loved artist, Van Gogh, attended several different art schools with sporadic attendance, and didn't actually graduate from any of them. He also disagreed with much of what he was taught. In spite of that, he produced a great number of treasured, works such as the two below... Click HERE to read the rest of this post

Trial, Error, Error, Repeat

Yesterday was another day of website building.  There are some things with WordPress that drives me crazy, such as when I post the link to my website on Facebook, it doesn't have a thumbnail image on it, and I've tried all the tutorials to fix the problem, but it persists.

Inspite of that, my website is coming along, I am making progress with it.  I've imported past blog posts there, and for a while I'll be posting on both, but soon I'll be moving.  I hope that those who have followed me on blogger will come over to my wordpress site and follow me there as well.  It can be found at http://ArdentReflections.com.

In addition to the website work, I've been adding up the cost of doing business as an artist over the past year, comparing that to what I've made in sales, just to find out how much money I've made lost as an artist, I won't share details, but I will say that I can see where the term starving artist comes from.  I didn't expect profit over this year, but I did expect a smaller deficit than I saw.  Oh well, there were a lot of expenses that I won't have to repeat any time soon, like buying a canopy for art shows, tables for the canopy, a cart to move supplies with at art shows, etc.

Last but not least, I actually got a little painting done, I'm still not happy with the clouds in my sky, but I'm getting closer to what I want.  One thing I am figuring out with this sunset though, is that I have to stop in between colors and let things dry, otherwise my oranges, and purples mix into brown, and my yellows and blues mix into green.  Here are two photos, neither one seems to really be right in color, the first one comes closer but is brighter than the painting really is I think...oh well,  what can you expect from a cell phone?

During my next session I will bring the purple and then blue up further in up in the sky, and cover those strange finger like projections I called clouds, then I will try puttin in some less finger like clouds, I can see it in my mind now, when before I couldn't, so hopefully I'll be able to translate that onto the canvas.    Then I'll bring more color into the darker blue water, the lighter blue area is actually going to be covered with land, as is the horizon line, so that the bay comes between where the viewer "stands" and the other side of the bay.  I'm not really concerned about how much experimentation this is taking, I mean after all, this is how I've learned EVERYTHING I know about painting so far, by trying, messing up, and trying again, until I get I get it right.

Thank you for reading! If you liked what you see, please consider following this blog with Google Friend connect, or follow me on Google+, or if you prefer, you can follow by email and get notified each time the blog is updated. See the right hand column to follow in any of these ways! I welcome your suggestions on how to make this blog more interesting to you!

Fine Art America is the place to go for Prints of all my Paintings.

 

My etsy shop is the place to go to buy my originals and request commissioned work. A few select prints are available here as well!

Teaching a SLOW Student!

Have you ever tried to teach anyone something?  It can be difficult!  Its even more difficult if the student you are teaching is just NOT getting it, now imagine you are doing all that, WHILE you are trying to teach something you don't know!

That is the struggle of the self taught artist, trial, and error, and more error.

Lots of error.  I am trying to get the sky in a painting just right, that is how I am seeing it in my mind, it is taking a lot of error.

Here are some of my practice sheets where I practiced different techniques to try to get the results I wanted:

Real quality art there, right?

But its all part of learning without a teacher.

Eventually I moved back onto my canvas, and its not perfect yet, but I feel like I know what needs happen now, its just that the paint I already put down needs to dry before I can do more, otherwise my colors will mix and I will end up with a green sky.  I also keep reminding myself that it won't just be a sky, there will be land and a bridge, and water, the sky will end up being only a backdrop for everything else.  I keep telling myself that, but I want to get the sky perfect anyway. It is getting close to what I see in my head, and I think I'll be able to bring it around to that point in t the next painting session.

Thank you for reading! If you liked what you see, please consider following this blog with Google Friend connect, or follow me on Google+, or if you prefer, you can follow by email and get notified each time the blog is updated. See the right hand column to follow in any of these ways! I welcome your suggestions on how to make this blog more interesting to you!

Fine Art America is the place to go for Prints of all my Paintings.

 

My etsy shop is the place to go to buy my originals and request commissioned work. A few select prints are available here as well!

Word for the Year

Have you noticed the trend on blogs of selecting a word for the year?  I have been debating what word I want for my year, it could be "create", it could be "vibrancy", both of those struck me as worthy of being selected... but instead, I am choosing a word that might come as surprise to many.

That's right, my word is discipline.  Why? Because its what I need in so many parts of my life.  I need it in the area of health and nutrition, I need it in the area of housekeeping, I need it in the area of spirituality, and I desperately need it in the areas of art.

If I am going to improve my art and see my life as an artist grow, I simply must discipline myself to work on it regularly.  I love doing it, but so often I put it off, and don't start.  I need to at least sketch four or five times a week, but preferably be working on more than just simple sketches and putting in time on my paintings, try new mediums, and learn new techniques.

So my word for 2015 is Discipline.

Thank you for reading! I welcome your suggestions on how to make this blog more interesting to you!

I'm back, and I have a Lot of New Work!

I haven't been posting as regularly as I should, and there are many reasons for this.  One of them is that I've been very busy actually creating art, and therefore taking less time to blog about it.

I've made a lot of new pieces, and I've been showing them every chance I can, here I is my stuff at a local Art Walk in August (that's my hubby sitting on the chair feeding his face!):

I know this blog needs to made a little more interesting, so soon I will be doing some video postings about art.  

Here are some of my new pieces:

 

Thank you for reading! I welcome your suggestions on how to make this blog more interesting to you!

Walking Wine...

Just thought I'd pop in to share my latest work in progress.  The gallery owner requested wine related paintings for a "Wine Walk" that is coming up.  (For some reason I get a mental image of someone walking a bottle of wine on a leash like a dog...)

Anyway, here is my first of the paintings, it still needs a little touch up around the bottom of the bottle, and some color blending on the grapes, as well as needing to be photographed properly for prints... however, here is a quick snap shot of it.

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Every Day in May, May 10

Today's challenge was to draw something creepy.  Being the die-hard Whovian that I am... this is what I came up with!

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Every Day in May, Day 9

Today's EDiM challenge was simple.  Draw a lock.
Since it was simple, I decided to keep it that way and drew a very simple lock in a very dimple medium (graphite).

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New Painting, "Dusk On Puget Sound" progress

Well, my new painting titled, "Dusk on Puget Sound" is finished... well almost.  I actually still need to get a good, high quality photo of it, and then varnish it, along with a few others that I've finished lately.

I finished the actual painting tonight though, and took a quick snap-shot of it to share, I'm afraid the colors on the photo aren't quite accurate... when I get the good quality photo I will post that, but for now this is the best I could do.

Thank you for reading! I welcome your suggestions on how to make this blog more interesting to you!

Gallery Acceptance, and What's on My Easel

Yesterday was a great day for me art-wise. I went to the post office to ship off a painting that sold, and while I was there I noticed a gallery in town that I'd never noticed before. This is probably because I rarely go to the shopping center near the post office, there is another down the street where I usually shop.

Anyway, I went into the gallery and started up a conversation with the woman there, who seemed very interested in seeing my work. Then the owner of the gallery came in, and he was also interested. So I gave them my website to view my portfolio, and also went home and gathered up some of my paintings to show them in person. I am very pleased to say that they will be displaying 5 of my paintings!

 I've also been making progress on my Peacock paintings that I started at the art walk. Here is what is on my easel right now:

I was thrilled about the gallery, and I still am, although the person in my life who should have been most encouraging was absolutely not encouraging at all, and in fact seemed very irritated that I had taken time out of my day to bring paintings down to the gallery.  Oh well, I guess some non-artistic people just don't get it, to me, getting my work in a gallery was far more important than the day's chores, or doing a load of laundry, or anything like that.

 
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The Chrome Monster gets a New Name.

Once upon a time there was, living in the mind of an artist, an idea to paint a picture of one of the coolest cars in the history of American cars.  So this artist, although she had never attempted to paint anything shiny or reflective before, decided to paint a Chevy Bel Air from the mid 1950's, she ended up deciding on a 1956 since she had reference photos of that year available to her.

So this artist started off, and kept telling herself that she could figure out a way to paint all of that shiny red metal, and silvery, reflective chrome.  She had no idea how she was going to do it, but just started painting what she saw, carefully matching values and colors, though she changed a few things like the photographer's reflection in the bumper of the reference photo.

It was a difficult painting, and while working on it the artist bestowed on it the name of "Chrome Monster" as she realized just how much of that challenging, shiny surface the 1956 Chevy had.  In her head, as she painted, she kept reminding herself, "don't worry, paint what you see, the printer didn't have any metalic ink, and it managed to produce a picture of chrome, so can you.".

Finally, after many days, she stepped back and looked at the painting and realized that it was done.  She was so happy with the result that she no longer saw it as monster, and instead decided to name it the "Chrome King".

And here it is:

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Chrome Monster Progress! Taking Shape!

The Chrome Monster is starting to take shape, I think for my first effort at shiny metal, and my first effort at a car, its coming along pretty good.  What do you think?

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Looking for a Gallery

I am really wanting to find a local gallery to represent my art, but so far have not had much luck.  I actually had one gallery owner look over my pieces, and actually say that he would put them in his gallery if I produced more animal art, which he said was one of the strongest selling.  So I went home and produced four of my best animal paintings, he looked at them and apologized, saying that he had filled the spot in the meantime while I was making those, and to check back in a few months. At first I was very irritated that I spent so much time preparing paintings specifically for him (see the paintings below) and he didn't end up putting them in his gallery  but then I realized that I thoroughly enjoyed doing them, and had learned that I had a knack for painting animals, which I didn't realize I had before that, so I really wasn't too upset.

Now though, the issue remains that I still don't have gallery representation.  I can keep trying to sell online, but honestly, a gallery is an artist's best bet for getting sales.  So, after the artwalk on April 13, I am going to start really pursuing that gallery representation.

   
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The "Chrome Monster" in progress.

I just thought I'd share a picture of my latest piece in-progress.  I'm jokingly calling it the "Chrome Monster" because it is so absolutely loaded with shiny, reflective chrome, which is a challenge for me to paint realistically.  I think the real name of the piece will be "When Cars Were Cool" or something like that.

Anyway, all I've done so far is outline everything, paint some lines to indicate main value areas, and start blocking in some of the darkest value areas.  I went a little furter than that with the hub cap though, and blocked in all of the main value areas except for the brightest highlights, which I will save for last.

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I Really Should Wake Up before Uploading

Last night, right before I crawled into bed exhausted, I realized that the paintings that I uploaded of Biz Biz were really not finished.  I didn't paint in her whiskers!  You can still see the pencil marks I made to guide the placement of the whiskers, but no white whiskers!  So, now I have to finish the whiskers, retake the picture of the painting, and upload the new version to Fine Art America. Then I'll be able to work a little more on my new painting, which will be the front end of a 1956 Chevy Bel Air.
The Bel Air painting will be my first attempt at making something look like shiny metal... since its my first time doing that, you'd think I'd pick something easy like a small metal bell, or utensil or something.... no... not me... naturally I picked a car loaded with chrome!  Oh well, hopefully I'll pull it off, otherwise I'll just waste a canvas!

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Working, working, working....

So, I've been continuing to work on my art pieces.  I finished an abstract yesterday VERY late at night, and I finished another pet portrait today.

The pet portrait was of a cat named Biz Biz, I got the photo, which was taken from a cell phone, so it wasn't the highest quality picture.  I made due though, I started with this:

Well, right away I decided to crop the image, and focus more on Biz Biz's face.  Here is the cropped picture:

Then to help me see the subtle nuances of the colors, I cranked up the saturation on the photo:

Then I was ready to sketch and paint, and the result was this:

The title doesn't show all the way on that preview, it is "Biz Biz Another Green Eyed Tiger".

As I mentioned before, I also completed an abstract last night.  I had been looking at lots of Kandinksy's work earlier in the day, because of seeing a friend's work that reminded me of Kandinsky.  So I combined the bright colors that I had been seeing in Kandinsky's work, with the the type of abstract pattern designs I use in a lot of my abstracts.  The result was "Tranquility", named such because that is how I felt while creating it... tranquil.

 

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I Haven't Vanished from Planet Earth!

Just wanted to drop in quickly and let anyone who happens to read this now and again know that I am still around.  I haven't posted for a while, but I've been busy creating.  Since my last post I've painted two portraits of pets and started one more, plus completed an abstract work, varnished several paintings, ruined one canvas in a painting that turned out to be a "flop" in my opinion... though I may salvage the canvas by Gesso-ing over the disaster.  Also, with the help of one of my best friends I've built three displays for my paintings to hang on during the upcoming artwalk, and have started painting those displays.

That, plus every day life, and I just haven't gotten to the blog for a few days.

So here is my abstract:


And here is one of my pet portraits:



Very soon I hope to post photos of the displays my friend and I built.  (Okay, seriously, he did most of the building while I did really useful things like hold the drill and misplace tools! Though I DID drill some holes to start screws, and I also did hold some wood still while he sawed.  I also painted the surfaces of the displays.)

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Homeschool Co-op Parent Room Sketches

Today was homeschool co-op for my kids, and in my down time before my first TA assignment, and in my down time after my last Teaching assignment, I sketched things I saw around me. A pedestal in the chapel area, a fire sprinkler, my pencil sharpener, and other items.  Later at home I continued sketching.  A lamp, my shoe, my hand...

Anyway, I've been wanting to draw from life more, and today I got in lots of sketches, all from real objects in front of me. Some of the objects had very straight lines, and I could have benefited from a straightedge or ruler, but all were just done free hand.
Here are today's sketches:

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