Becoming an Artist

For the new year, I've decided that before I start a painting, I'll note the goals for that painting session and/or the finished product if I'm not painting alla prima (in one session). I've sort of informally been doing this for the last couple of months, but now I want to consciously follow these steps: 1) write down my goals, 2) paint, 3) acknowledge that the painting is crap ( see previous post ), 4) note how I did or did not meet my goals, and finally, 5) create a next steps list. Of course, these steps won't be executed until I've done the all-important value studies! Last October I painted a lesson from Dreama Tolle Perry's Flow class , a cute carafe of cream with a white ceramic basket of strawberries. The basket didn't read "white" in my painting, which I didn't like, and I wanted to figure out why...but I wanted to use my own still life to do it.  So I set up a scene informed by Dreama but all my own. My scene used my own props to

I'm continuing to work on my value studies and bouncing all over the place, both with subject and with medium. I swear that one of these days I'll find my lane. There are things I like and dislike about oils, acrylic, and watercolor. There's not a perfect medium, but oils sure are easier for working on composition and value.  As the year is coming to an end, I'm wrapping some things up and getting ready to launch other things. I went through my last three years of paintings (about 150) and categorized them as keep for myself, make available for gifts or purchase, or repurpose (at first I had labeled them trash, but that just seemed so mean, and I really can use the paper for other things). With the gift/sell category, I created a PowerPoint file with all available paintings, categorized by subject. Each was labeled and priced...a scary declaration on my part that my creativity is valuable. In the coming year, I will use this file to create a new website for my growing a

What's the best way to create a value study for me? I'm trying to figure that out. And how to paint from it once I've done it? I'm trying to figure that out, too. Been re-reading Ian Roberts' Mastering Composition . Have re-dedicated myself to working on a value composition a day (my original goal). He promises that a year of these daily compositions will make a HUGE difference in my art. Even with the few I've done, I'm seeing improvement and I'm asking a lot more questions, which I think means I'm on the right track for me right now.   Overall, I've done five value studies of the rose, and it's getting tedious. But each one had me asking another question, so I continued on. It was a great exercise, trying different methods. I should have done one last one, a pencil sketch, but I've run out of steam. What's interesting, though, is that they all look similar yet different. Referring to the quad image at right, the simplest studies (3

 As mentioned in my last post, I've signed up for Dreama Tolle Perry's Flow class. My intention with this class is to watch one of her demos and replay it while I paint along with it, recreating "her" painting. Then I plan to take what I learned in that demo and create "my" version. Eventually, I'd like to paint my version in oil, acrylics, and watercolor...trying to figure out which medium I prefer.  The first oil painting demo I chose to watch was a backlit rose in a small glass jar. I love roses, and when I ventured into oils the first time, I painted a lovely rose from my garden. This is the only painting from that era that I liked. As a side note, I have nine hybrid tea roses and four floribundas around the house. And since I'm in northern California, there are blooms on these plants for nine months out of the year! What a treat.  I really should paint these beauties more often.  I'm happy with both paintings but for different reasons. The p

My gelato oil painting from the  introduction to oils lesson in Dreama Tolle Perry's "Flow" class.   Three years ago I temporarily gave up watercolors and embarked on a oil painting journey. I had experienced a watercolor meltdown (yes, it's a thing) during a plein air vacation, so I spent the last day watching a fellow painter render a scene in oils. WHOA, oils are so much more forgiving than watercolors! OK, so I bought myself some oil paints,  new gear,   read some books and dabbled a bit, then signed up for a three-day plein air oil painting class with a famous local artist. Then I promptly gave up oils. They are messy and thick, and it's impossible to pull a nice watercolor wash with them (duh). John F. Carlson  recommends in his famous landscape painting book to start your painting career with oils and to not touch watercolors for at least a year. Too bad I hadn't read that ten years ago. And John Singer Sargent said that to paint watercolors is to "

I'm rereading Carlson's Guide to Landscape Painting, as I've decided that I really miss painting landscapes, especially in plein air, but the reason I stopped doing it was because I wasn't happy with my results and I wasn't making progress (ugh, watercolors!). Carlson's book is  DENSE. I gave up highlighting it because almost every paragraph would need a highlight, but I am typing up notes as I read, with the hopes of eventually creating a cheat sheet for myself.  One of the first lessons he writes about is his "theory of angles," where, for an average landscape, the sky, ground, trees, and mountains have certain relative values. Thinking about the six studies I just completed , I realized that I had arbitrarily assigned the sky a mid value, to make the house more the focal point, but according to Carlson, the sky should be the lightest value of the natural objects. Oops. So I redid the value study, using his theory. I kind of like it. Looks more "