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!

I'll Let You in on a Secret

As an artist I have a secret.  It haunts me with every landscape painting I do.  I don't know how to paint clouds.  I mean, yeah, I try... but they never come out realistic enough for me.  I do acceptably with small wispy white clouds in a blue sky, but big puffy clouds, or storm clouds I'm just never happy with.  I've gotten lucky on  a few paintings and had reasonably satisfying results, but usually its a wrestling match to get there.

For example, my recent work in progress.  I first painted the whole canvas blue, because it is going to have water and sky.  I wasn't really concerned with coating the entire canvas evenly, because I had in my minds eye some spectacular clouds that would cover most of the sky portion.So here is what it looked like after that first coat of paint:

Well, I proceeded to try to produce my vision of these clouds, and I came very close.

This was almost exactly what I wanted, I was thoroughly pleased with the lower left section of sky, but moving away from that area, I felt it looked worse and worse, until finally up in the right hand corner I felt I was looking at blue camo rather than clouds. I posted it to my facebook page, and to several art groups asking for advice, and was assured by everyone the clouds looked fine, but I couldn't shake the impression of looking at blue camo.

Maybe I should have listened to everyone, but NO, not Mrs. Perfectionist Vicki!

I tried to fix it, but only made it worse, and finally, in frustration, I did this:

So, I spent most yesterday evening painting, and the net result so far is a blue canvas.  NICE!

Some day, I'm going to figure this cloud thing out.  I think I should start practicing on paper for a bit, until I get it, so I don't have to paint over a canvas.

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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!