Paintings done, show hung ( all for sale except 4 which are NFS as I have kept them and are only available as prints and 1 on loan from the owners) – and in the first 36 hours of the show, 1 painting sold and 3 giclees were ordered of different NFS
Here are few pieces from the show. Now the photos of the paintings were shot quickly with my professional level digital camera but the light has been terrible and going outside in the snow was not an option. I have to send the photos to my print/giclee maker for color adjustment. They are reasonably close but not completely accurate.
I usually work in sizes where most people can find wall space for it. Very few people can commit space for 3' x 4' or the other large sizes – and that means you have automatically limited your market. They can always find room for thing 18 x 24 and smaller. I prefer to work in studio. You can not use my techniques and produce a painting in one session. Most are on and off the easel 4 -8 times as layers have to dry before proceeding. Further schlepping around all that equipment around is a pain in the backside and fishing gnats out of oil paints is a complete bore. If Monet had had a really good digital camera he wouldn’t have sat outside freezing to paint haystacks.
(1) 18 x 24 - hardboard “3 Sailboats”
500 feet from the house – bay opens to Lake MI. All 3 boats live here all summer and the red one belongs to friends. I just put them where I wanted them to be.
It’s a reverse focal point.
The background trees were done by underpainting a base color (the imprimatura) , then blocking a thin layer of colors loosely as tree/bush shapes (various greens, purples and blue), allowing the second layer to dry to moderate tackiness, then overglazing with a grey mix and then scumbling the wet glaze. You can’t see all the tones and colors in the back trees in the photo. Glazing is notoriously difficult to photograph as it slams the light back at the camera – makes my print maker nuts and it means having to set up the lighting to photograph very carefully. This is about as good as it gets without special lighting to photograph but is still not completely accurate on the colors in the trees or waters.
The reflections are glazes of the same color as the boat applied over the water color – again multiple layers and glazes. The water color serves as the underpainting for the reflections and automatically darkens the color of the boat to a deeper shade as a reflection. Glazing over the water gives ‘can not miss’ reflection colors.
(2) 16 x24 - hardboard “First Light”
Look left from the 3 sailboats and that is the east end of the bay where the river comes in – 500 ft from the house. Light area of the water and the background mist are an over-glaze. Sky is done wet-on-wet over a base underpainting and involves blending and feathering colors together on the painting– must be done in one sitting. Technique sometimes called ‘broken color’
(3) 14 x20 - canvas “Dinghy Regatta”
Quite large inland lake – over 20 sq mile surface - 1 mile up the road. Sails and hulls were wet-on-wet broken color. Water is multiple overlapping and adjacent small strokes of multiple shades and colors
(4) 16 X 20 – hardboard “Crystal Evening”
Same inland lake 1 mile up the road. Sky is another wet-on-wet blending and feathering colors together. We regularly get those blue-white-orange skies with ‘smoke clouds’ on hot humidity-rising summer nights. Light area of the water is again over-glazing the base painting.
(5) 18 x24 – hardboard “Fog Bank”
Made it up. Large sailboat is classic Sparkman-Stephens Concordia yawl built 1920s-1950s.
Painting is the very devil to photograph – this is not true on the colors but is about as close as it has gotten even with a professional level digital that can hit 4800 pixels. Probably have to send it to my print/giclee maker to get the photo for prints.
3 layers of glaze for the base colors of sky and the a 4th glaze to create the grayish mist that was scumbled
(6) 14 x 18 – canvas “Land’s End, Day’s End”
Made it up or at least the colors. 50+ years on boats and water – harbor of our yacht club 40 years ago but had only very very old black and white photo. Light on water and on boat hulls are again glazing on an underpainting.
(7) 16 x 20 – canvas “Reflections”
Photo so old I took it with one of the first SR cameras and film had to be sent out for developing. Started it as a practice piece – if an easy technique or a horribly hard technique both end with the same effect, choose to use the most difficult method – fiddled with it off and on for years. Subject presented technical problems - dark to light, diffuse background to detail, no identifiable light (the sky) to set the tone) etc. Water is all glazing – about 8-9 layers. Ditto the red building to achieve the faded red tone and then to make the paint look old and peeling.
(8) 12 x 16 – hardboard “Red White and Blue”
Made it up using classic wooden racing dinghies. Reflections are glazes of the same color as the boat. Hulls and wood trim on boats again are wet-on-wet blending the colors to create the variances in tone, shade and highlights.
(9) 16 x 24 – hardboard “Afternoon”
Harbor of next town over. The light & reflections really did shatter and dance on the water like that in my photo. Light in water are again glazes – 3 layers. The foreground waves are a base tone, then a broken color over-painting of a different tone and then the final darker shade.
(10) 22 x 26 - oil on hardboard “Walking the Beach”
Loaned by owners for show and then they get to take it home. Photographing a little light in places (ie: her pants, wave’s blues & greens & such areas) as compared to the painting. It was taken before it got its last touch-ups – like putting the wave froth back in around his left arm and fixing the end of the wave on the far right end where a small area had dried so light it had that gawd-awful ‘white table cloth dropped on the beach’ look.
The double portrait was done from a photo they provided which had been shot by a professional photographer of them. (See photo below the painting image.) Nasty on getting the details of her left hand – when the image is enlarged, the hand is just a mist of color from the light. Had to reduce the exposure of the photo to bring them to the foreground. And yes, the lake really is green and turquoise near shore.
It is largely glazing upon glazing – up to 3 or 4 layers over the underpainting – for the beach and wet sand. The dune is wet-on-wet of multiple colors and shades so that, for example, the tan contains greens, oranges, purples, golds etc and then glazed with the green. The wave is first done as an underpainting of the blues, purples and greens. Then very light shades of those tones are applied brokenly and then finally the areas of in various shades of white (in various thicknesses and depth so the under coats may or may not show through in varying degrees.) .
And the original photo for this one:
Linear Mode
