Apples & Monet

Apples & Monet

6"x8" on canvas mounted on board  $150.

Purchase HERE

Artist Note.

Still having a great time using 

colors from one of  Claude Monet's paintings.
It happened like this...

A friend gave me some apples from her garden

(They were greener when I got them)

What to do? 

Which color harmony did I want?

I painted them Saturday quickly without a set-up

I wanted to go high key 

meaning -

only a small amount of dark below a middle value.

But on Monday, at the guild,

we all worked 

on finding the colors Monet

used in his beautiful painting below.

The Japanese Bridge.

Work on the easel

shows the print in a plastic sleeve.

(top)

After doing an exercise of mixing
then matching the
Monet colors on top of the print,
I was left with really
beautiful colors on my palette.

I started a new water lily painting
(lower left)

then worked on the top of the
apple painting. (lower right.)

I like the colors surrounding the apples
MUCH better.

Thanks to Monet for the inspiration.

Watercolor Weekend - Apple Trio

Apple Trio

6x6in watercolor on Strathmore NFS

A painting I actually finished!

Artist Note.
I have been trying all week to paint and
could not focus to finish one. It feels really
good to be able to pull this one off.

Thanks to everyone for the sensitive and
touching comments and emails. I am amazed
how many other of you have recently lost
a loved one and the losses to breast cancer
are many. I am reminded we have to appreciate
every day and truly love family and friends.

The magnitude of what has happened in the
Philippines is beyond comprehension. My
prayers are for help to reach the surviving men,
women, mothers, fathers, brothers,
sisters and all the animal life.
I know Daily Paintworks will be having an
auction to raise money like they always do.
They are wonderful and I will be happy, along
with all the other artists, to participate.

Exercises on Painting Edges

AN ARTIST IN HIS STUDIO (detail) 1904
John Singer Sargent painted himself at his palette.
In my opinion and many others,
Sargent was a master at painting edges.

For me personally, exploring painting edges is part of the pleasure of using paint.
I am not setting myself up as an expert, but I have had the satisfaction
of seeing my own ability increase through doing the following exercises.
I hope these will be of interest to those artists who do not have the advantage
of having access to a teacher.
I have included a black and white of each to help those who
have problems seeing values in color.
Click on any image to enlarge.

#1. Back-lighting using value and color changes.
We have all seen the sunlight behind a tree or flowers,
illuminating the edges. This is easy with a dark
background, but how do you get it to glow
against a light area?
Shown is both an apple and a shrub.
The principle is the same for both of them.
Place a glowing color on the edges changing down in 
value at least three times before
hitting the core shadow.
Here the light is warm
so I used a warm/temperature on the first layer
going slightly cooler after that.
Do not make the mistake of over blending
these values together. Be careful to step down each
value change with a gentle transition.
Tickle the edges together with the SIDE
 of a soft brush very lightly
if you want a smooth appearance.

#2 Losing an edge using value and/or color changes.

I think this one is important because it prevents the
undesirable, "cookie cutter" look.  See example here.

 I use the term CC
for when a similar
color and value is
all the way around
something.
Usually it also has
the halo, this is where
the artist caries the
paint almost up to
the edge but not quite,
leaving a halo effect

Cookie Cutter and halo.











THE CURE...
Make sure to find a place where two values can
merge at an edge.
On the apple below there is a darker blue area against
the shadow side of the apple.
On the shrub, the band of hill color and the shadow
make two areas of similar value changes

#3 Focal Point
The principle here is -  lightest/darkest/sharpest area

Be sure that the main dark
and light has no competition.
Here the shadow side of the
apple and the cast shadow
do not have the same degree
of contrast as the
focal area.  It is still dark but
not to the same degree.
The edges are
different all around the
apple using value and color.

Tomorrow I will show different brush and knife techniques
for edges..

Fracturing a Little Part of a Cezanne

Fracturing Cezanne

6x6in oil on canvas panel  $100.

Apples and a pear - Influenced by the Master, Cezanne.


Artist Note.

Last year I painted a series of small areas (details) from famous paintings.
It was a way to learn and explore techniques.
The one I copied, below, is from
Still life with Fruit Dish, Apples
See Cezanne
I remember it was hard to tell the correct colors when I was trying to copy
it because every reproduction looked different. As I painted, I discovered
it was a pear balancing on top of the apples. Crafty Cezanne was most likely
trying to see who was really looking. Most of us would fall into the trap.
If it says apples in the title then we are apt to think they are all apples.

I placed one of his jugs from another painting
behind the apples and took out the glass
so it would not be exactly the same.

Apples and Plums

Apples and Plums

6x8in oil on canvas panel   $125.  SOLD

This is for the DPW Emotion Challenge.
I do not want to feel sad so I avoided painting anything serious.
Been there - done that.

COLOR - now that is what makes me feel happy

And, an apple a day keeps the doctor away,
so that makes me happy too!
Throw in a couple of plums and hopefully I will never
need a doctor again.

Apple Demo for Class

Apple demo for class

not for sale

Working with a different group I did another apple demo.
Maybe you remember that in the classes I teach, the focus this month
 is painting from the imagination so these are not copied from real apples.
It appears that the hard part of painting from the imagination
is understanding the light and how it falls on a surface.

Seeing how many in the class had painted light on the sides as well as the top,
I quickly drew in the box showing the apple with a top surface to
catch the light. They immediately "got it" and some pretty decent apples
were presented.

I am always using the phrase, "light follows form," but I found
that it is not always understood. Another way of saying it is...
The path of light can not go around corners.

Different methods of broken edge work and colors were also included in
this little demo so this may appear a little weird, but I thought it may be
of interest to those who do not have access to instruction.

Having a great time with my wonderful grandchildren but admit
to being tired after teaching all day and then building a fort
(from a precious sari) to play cowboys in. I got the midnight watch!

An Apple A Day Keeps the Doctor Away

An Apple A Day Keeps The Doctor Away!

oil on canvas

Completing my fun time of presenting different forms of still life.  

This is a contemporary viewpoint of an ordinary, fruit and objects, still life...only this is a detail from a larger painting. (see below)

In this case, the square format, big brushstrokes and simple shapes suggesting the apples, fruit and bowl are what make it contemporary. No tight realism - this is all about the eye filling in the detail enough for the viewer to know what they are looking it.

The full painting, below, has not been finished yet. It was a demo done for The Artists Guild on a 24x24in canvas. It took less than two hours, which amazes me as I can spend much longer than that on my small, daily paintings.

I did it back in the fall when I was getting fresh apples by the bushel, right from the Nichols Apple Farm, La Luz, N.M. 

My mother raised me with the old expression of an apple a day...and for good reasons I am a believer of it!

Four- Not Three

Four - Not Three

6x8in oil on canvas board 100.

The title comes from the "rule" in painting that you should have an odd number of things in your set-up. One, three, five etc. Well, this started off as three but using the boat shaped bowl made the design move in a definite direction and I realized when I was near completion that it did not please me. I put a piece of glass in front of the painting and painted another apple in several places until I reached this position. Maybe having some of the apple going out of the picture allows it to be not quite the unwanted even number of four. Maybe a title change to

Three and Half - Not Three?

Apples and Plums

Apples and Plums

6x8 oil on canvas board $100.

This maybe the last of the fruit paintings because the plums are getting too ripe. I did enjoy getting fruit right out of the orchard because the leaves were still on some of them and they make interesting shapes

Enjoy Labor Day tomorrow.