It's Alive!!!

Sometimes a painting develops a life of its own, and changes, grows, almost evolves as progress continues. As if it's truly alive.

This has been the case with my current work in progress, you may remember that it started off like this:

Then, morphed into this... click here to continue reading.

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!