So these are 2 of the paintings I did as I struggled this week. When I edited the colored one and looked at it in black and white it was not too far off from this one on the left that I painted in one color. I have yet to be successfull with this painting, but I thought I would show you where I am coming from. I will continue to try capturing this to my satisfaction, but probably not today ( =
This week has been one big struggle when it comes to my painting! I took a photo of a beautiful spot last fall. The setting is of a waterfront area early in the morning. There was bright, warm, low sun shining on the shoreline making the dried grasses glow in the warmth. In contrast, the shadows were a beautiful cool blue.
I have been eager to put this into a painting and be able to capture that wonderful contrast. So this week I have painted that one scene no less than 10 times, perhaps more. Each one has been dreadfully unsuccessful! I tried everything, from quick little sketchy paintings, to full blown effort, all with no success. Finally I decided to take a step back and do a value study using a single color. (Almost like a black and white). This proved to be helpful in showing how close the colors were in value, but it did not help me to get the colors correct. I guess I will just have to go back to it another day and try again.
Today I decided to divert from my little studies and do a winter scene that really appealed to me. I love the little bit of sun peaking through the trees. I did try to work loosely on this and felt like I had some success not being too fussy.
Can you guess which of these took 15-20 minutes, and which one took almost a full day? Well, I wanted to do this to prove that a painting can be done quickly and effectively. In this I wanted to capture the essence of the scene; like the light vs. darks and the general layout, and perhaps notes of color. The larger one took most of a day. It really is not that much more detailed than the other. They both capture the scene. I could work on the smaller one more, but this is all I needed it to tell me right now. I think this is a very valuable skill to learn well. I will be doing much more of this quickk study to see what I can do with it. I would not consider the larger one a complete painting, but I was at a point of overworking it and decided I had messed with it enough. I will try it again another day.
Well after scraping off several attempts at painting pears with fewer and more deliberate brush strokes, I think I finally had some progress and success. In this group I decided to begin with a black and white to help me determine the values that I was struggling with. This seemed to help out quite a bit in the long run. The first 4 of these only took me about 10-15 minutes each. That is my goal with these quick studies. The last one I played with a bit longer. I want to do this same sort of study with another subject. It has been very helpful.
My objective in t
his study, was to get to the point where I could put down brush strokes with confidence. I did not want to overwork these things. My first 4 were horrible. They took me about 1 hour each and I’m not even sure that at that point they looked enough like pears to suit me. I actually scraped off the next several attempts. Ugh!
These are my first attempts at painting a white coffee cup. One of the exercises in The Daily Painting book, suggested doing 4 paintings that consisted of a cup and a couple different pieces of colored papers. These each took about an hour a piece and I tried not to be too fussy or to go back over them after my time was up. Overall I think there is progress. So I’m going to call it good!
Art with my Coffee 