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!

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!

Don't Leave Me Hanging!

Don't you hate it when people leave you hanging? They start to tell you about something, and then never finish, or never let you know the outcome to something they were excited about?

So do I, but sometimes I still end up doing just that.  An example would be that way back in May of 2014 I showed my readers a painting from start to finish, and told them it was going to be entered into a juried show.  Then I neglected to let anyone know if the painting had been accepted to the show or not.

Well, better late than never right?  To refresh your memory, this was the painting:

And it was one of three that I was going to enter into a juried show.  Well, it did get accepted, it was the only one of my paintings that did get accepted.  Now, this show gets hundreds of submissions, and rejects most of them, only showing a handful of what is submitted.  So even being accepted is a huge honor, especially for a completely self-taught artist like myself.  However that wasn't the end of the honor.  When I went to the exhibit, I noticed this attached to the wall next to my painting.

It turns out that in the category of paintings they gave three prizes, and I didn't win one, but each Juror also got to select ONE work from ALL categories that he personally felt should have been awarded the prize, and give it an honorable mention.  So juror Venker chose my painting from every single work in the show, and he personally told me that he had voted for it to win in the painting category.

Okay, so sure, I'd have liked to have won a prize, but to get accepted was a big deal, then to get an honorable mention out of all the works there.  I was very pleased.

I will soon be adding this painting to my etsy shop, I have to photograph it in the frame as well as the photo above so people can see how it will look in their home.  However prints of it are available right now, the photograph below is the print quality one, that best shows the true colors and values of the original.  Click on it to see a much larger version on Fine Art America.

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!

 

Stretching Myself

One of my Index cards from the ICAD challenge.

Before I first started painting in June of 2012, on those index cards that seemed so innocuous but proved to be carriers of the deadly "art attack" virus, I had no idea how much I had missed art in my life.  You see, way back when, years ago, in Junior High School and some in High School, I took great joy in creating.  Drawing, using oil pastels, markers, colored pencils.  I didn't paint much back then, though I'm sure at some point I must have used paint a little, I really don't remember, but it certainly wasn't a medium that I used regularly... at any rate, at that time I really loved art.  For some reason, shortly after high school, I stopped. Perhaps it was because the responsibilities of adult life left little time for it, and little money for supplies.  Perhaps it was because of other issues I was dealing with that caused me to feel unworthy of something that would bring me joy.  Perhaps I just didn't get around to it.  For whatever reason though, art was no longer a part of my life.  Occasionally I would do crafts, make Christmas ornaments, crochet baby clothes, something like that, but drawing, or "painting" with colored pencils or pastels, was completely forgotten.

After starting the ICAD challenge though, I quickly realized I was hooked, not just on art, but in particular on painting.  It wasn't long before I wanted to move beyond the index cards and onto a canvas.  Since then, I've painted and painted and painted.  Having had no formal training, I have learned most of what I know by trial and error, often with many errors repeated again and again (when will I finally automatically paint background objects BEFORE foreground objects???).  I've watched a few how-to videos, and read a few books, but mostly I'm self taught... I've been learning to paint by PAINTING.  Eventually I might like to go for my BFA, but in the meantime I just continue to paint.


Recently, the gallery owner where my work is sometimes displayed suggested that I take part in a local juried show.  He felt that it would give me more exposure, and also give me a chance to see how my work compares with other local artists and to get feedback from more people.  I looked over the work I had, and felt that there were many things I had learned recently that didn't show in those pieces, so I decided to create three pieces specifically for the show, being mindful to apply everything I've learned up until now.  In other words, I wanted to really stretch myself to the limits of my current skills and abilities, so that I would be submitting the very best work I am currently capable of producing.

Here is the first piece as it took shape:

This first photo shows the work after my first painting session, I have no idea how much time I spent up until this point on it, but it was all one painting session.  I used three reference photos I had taken, but didn't copy directly from any of them, just used them to spark ideas and give a general outline of what was happening.

I decided to block in some general darks and lights in the background, so that when I added background trees gaps in them wouldn't show stark blue sky, because I've noticed in some of earlier paintings that sky showing through like that often makes the landscape look flat, or fake.

Then, here is the second in progress photo, a little more has changed at this point, one back ground tree has been added, and one more foreground tree.

Then I added the other background trees.  Notice that I made them lighter and less distinct than the ones in the foreground, I've been trying to learn to implement atmospheric perspective.

On to progress picture number 4, here I have lightened the trees in the background more, plus added some more foreground elements. I know that the picture looks very different in color here, but it hasn't changed.  All but the final two photos were taken with my phone, and it is very sensitive to changes in lighting.  The slightest difference in available light causes a whole different color cast over everything.

Next I simply added more detail in the foreground, such as some flowers on the bush in the lower right hand corner, and some more reflected light on the pond.

Then I thought I was done, so I took a good picture with my good camera, but afterward, I noticed that the sky above the background trees looked "dirty" because of all the times I'd painted over to obscure the trees a little more in trying to achieve the atmospheric perspective:

So I fixed the sky, and then took another picture with my good camera.  I printed several samples to compare the color to the original, and edited until it matched.  And here is the final result:

So there is the painting that will be my first entry into the juried show.  Because I am keeping it for the show, I can't offer it for sale yet, however prints of it are available on my Fine Art America page, and if the original doesn't sell during the show, it will be offered for sale afterward either in my local gallery, or in my Etsy shop.

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!

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!

Hmmm... Still Learning!

Since I've begun painting, I've always felt that landscapes were my weakness.  I've just never been very satisfied with them.  I was okay with it if I did an obviously abstracted landscape... one that was clearly not meant to look exactly real... but when it came to traditional landscapes... I just wasn't happy with my results.

Well, I think I may finally be breaking through that barrier.  I've been working on a landscape and I think I am quite happy with the results so far, so I thought I'd share the work-in-progress.  I think the real difference in this one is that I went through my photography and found reference photos to use, when before I just tried to "make up" a landscape in my mind.  I didn't try to copy any of my photos exactly, but I did use them to plan the general shape of the shoreline, hills beyond the water, and the color of sky and water.

Just goes to show you, I still have lots learn and never want to stop learning!

Here is what I have so far:

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