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!

Finally Decent Photos!

Way back LAST YEAR or a week and half ago, however you look at it, I posted a cellphone photo of my painting, "Inlets to Illusion" and promised that I would soon have a quality photo of it to share.  Well, my setup for photographing my paintings is not ideal, I have to rely on outdoor weather to be just right, namely, it must be overcast over the entire sky, but not raining, not windy, etc.  So, I've been biding my time, waiting, and yesterday the weather was perfect for photography of fine art!

So finally I get to share with you not only my "Inlets to Illusion", but also the painting that I finished on Friday and posted cellphone photos of on Saturday.

First things first, here is "Inlets to Illusion", if you'd like to see it bigger, which I highly recommend to fully appreciate the optical art qualities, click on it, it will take you the website where I sell prints of my fine art paintings, but there is no obligation to buy just because you looked!

And now, for the impressionist and intuitive "No-Brush Painting" which I ended up titling "Sky Ablaze".

So that's all for today, Happy Sunday!

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!

A Brushless Painting

Tonight,  I began a painting.  I was feeling like I wanted a break from tight details like my last painting consisted of, I wanted to do something loose and free.  So I grabbed a canvas and my paints, and a couple of pieces of sponge, and I began to randomly paint a background. I didn't really have a plan for where it was going at this point, so I took some time to just look at it and wait for it to "suggest" something.  I got several ideas, depending on which way I oriented the canvas.

Finally something came to mind, and I decided that I wanted to continue working without brushes, I decided that the entire painting, with the exception my signature when I was finished, would be finished without brushes, using only sponges, palette knives, and fingers.

Here is the painting nearly finished. 

There were some dark marks left in the upper right hand corner from when I painted the background with no idea what the painting would be, they looked out of place in the sky. So when I went to put the grasses int the foreground, I decided to also put in some tree branches up in that corner, and here is the finished product.  The only place a paint brush was used was for my signature.  The only thing remaining  to be done is to paint the bottom of the canvas black, after the painting dries enough to be turned over.

The colors aren't quite true in this phone photo, but a better photo will be coming soon.

So, all in all it was a productive night!

Thank you for reading! If you like 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!