Art Blog - What Makes A Painting Work

Two challenges presented themselves from the outset in painting this view from under the wharf at Santa Cruz, California. Light comes from multiple points, coming round in all directions to pierce the darkness under the wharf. The far side of the wharf admits an almost blinding light as the sun sparkles on the water. Shadows from the supports are cast at many points and from many directions in varying intensity. The second challenge is created by the large number of straight lines which could carry the eye beyond the picture plane and away from the focal points… Continue reading… 0 comments

"Nothing but blue skies from now on," is marvelous as a song lyric or as a description of perfect vacation weather, but rather risky as a painting strategy. Solid blue skies shout. They make statements. They take over. Avoid them as you would avoid a pushy but boring guest at a social gathering. Skies can add to the harmony of a composition. Color and pattern are both important. When you look at sky in a photograph taken on a clear day, it presents a rather solid even blue. The real skies overhead send all matter of colors bouncing back at your eyes. Thus skies can benefit from touches of other colors in the palette that you use for that particular painting… Continue reading… 2 comments

Painting is about light. Art portraying dusk to the darkest night deals with light in three interesting ways. There are works give us only the natural light of the night, largely dependent on moonlight but even the ambient light of a moonless night has form if few hints of color. It takes a deft handling of color and value to depict that soft world of dusk or of moonglow. Moonless or clouded nights are largely value studies. Two masters of the night who painted in California's central coast region approximately a century ago are Charles Rollo Peters and Gottardo Piazzoni. Artificial light may be the focal point or the theme of the painting. Sometimes this is the glowy cottages of Thomas Kincaid, and the window lights on a Christmas card scene… Continue reading… 3 comments

Landscapes can range from realistic to symbolic or abstract. Color treatment is a factor in the level of realism. There are landscapes which reflect local color, which show an understanding of light in a particular region and season. These paintings can "take you there", bringing to mind the smells and sounds of a familiar locale through the visual signals. The dancing light of the most impressionist of Impressionists such as Monet, asks the viewer to look beyond the obvious and generalized color instead of seeing the color of an object as a solid unchanging block. Fauve painters added a pulsing color beat to their works, intensifying and often entirely changing the natural colors. They invite a passionate response to their scenes… Continue reading… 3 comments

Dirt, rocks, gravel, clay, silt, stone: these words usually call to mind tones of brown and gray but the earth often contains tones of vibrant color. Light them with sun, split them open with nature's own violent disruptions, wash them with water, or polish them, and how they sparkle. I know many water colorists who avoid the earth pigments for more transparent choices, but traditionally the two sources of color were earth and plant dyes, with plants most often ephemeral. Of course there might be the occasional beetle thrown in! Certainly the earth colors: the ochres, umbers, siennas, for example, are ideal on the palette when painting rocks… Continue reading… 2 comments

When you paint, make me believe. A painting attempts to take a flat plane and make us believe images of a three dimensional world. The artist, like the fiction writer, needs to create a willing suspension of disbelief. For years the wild sunsets often seen in paintings in British and American landscapes from the late 1800s struck me as a fantasy element. I had no problem enjoying the paintings because there was an internal consistency. Under those multihued sunsets and towering cloud formations, deep shadows and rosy or orange hued highlights built beautiful, larger than life landscapes… Continue reading… 2 comments

There are no self taught artists, but there are many lessons beyond the formal walls of the classroom. Museums have long been places where artists can sharpen their skills, and many welcome students with sketchbook in hand. Some paintings within the museums you frequently visit may become old friends that you must spend time with even when you are there to view a special show. At Stockton's Haggin Museum "Sophistication", a 1908 work by Harry Wilson Watrous, is such a work for me. So are the Albert Bierstadt works in the museum's permanent collection. My fascination with "Sophistication" led a young friend to give me the box pictured here from the Haggin's gift shop… Continue reading… 3 comments

Visual impact is the first thing we work toward in a painting, with color, value, and composition forming a triad of essentials. After the sense of sight, we most often appeal to that of touch. We want the viewer to be able to imagine from our visual clues the silken smoothness of a fabric, the rough bark of redwood or oak, the scratch of a kitten's tongue, the heft of a stone. Less often we spark the senses of taste, hearing, and smell. When I developed "Heavenly Aroma", I hoped to visually depict a smell. I was afraid the painting shown here was a little too "local" to make it into the highly competitive juried show currently open at Delicato Winery. Only about 30% of the paintings entered made the cut, and I had better hopes for my other entries… Continue reading… 5 comments

After deciding which slice of the world will make a good landscape composition, a second problem to be worked out is how much detail to show. When I saw these ducks sitting in the sun on a weathered boardwalk bridge rail at Neary Lagoon I was struck by their bright beauty. There was no doubt they were the stars of the scene. They would make a lovely watercolor painting by themselves. Yet I was also struck by patterns which spoke of the rich complexity of the landscape. The weathered wood had a lavender tone where it had been exposed by the peeling paint, and revealed growth patterns in the wood as the paint held to some layers better than to others. The ducks themselves had an array of colors in their feathers although the male's head and wings made them clearly identifiable as mallards… Continue reading… 3 comments

One thing I have noticed time and again in the effort to create better paintings--get the shadows right first. This is particularly important for the plein air painter whose light source is continually moving. With shadows in place, there is support for the memory as the light changes. Once the shadows are in, values can quickly be sketched for light/bright spots hit directly by the light source and the mid-tones between. This pastel painting was literally saved by the shadows. I began in last October on a sunny day sitting on my patio and viewing long the south wall of the house. Because it was during open studios, it was a demo painting that I couldn't possibly finish on the spot… Continue reading… 1 comment