Oil on Canvas Panel 12 x 16 ins
I painted this portrait of my daughter from a photo I took while we were sitting on our deck one sunny lunchtime. I was struck by the lovely green reflection of her shirt in her cheek and chin. It really seemed to jump up there!
Here are some of the steps I took in the painting:
This is my brother!
Last summer I delivered paintings of his wife and his son to them when we visited. He very gently hinted that it might be fitting to have one of himself to go with them.
When I returned home I collected all the photos I had of him and sent him a selection of my favorites as possibilities for painting. We both agreed that this one was our choice. It’s from a vacation in Greece (I didn’t take the photo!).
I liked the warmth and happiness of the photo. It was a full-length shot and the resolution was not very high when I enlarged it, but the expression and the colors were so great I proceeded anyway.
He and I are both pleased with the result and I will deliver it to him in the UK later this year.
I liked the lower left design best, so I chose that for my painting.
I applied the paint with a palette knife throughout. I like the sunlight effect in the lower half of the painting.
8 x 10 ins, oil on canvas board
This painting was developed from the notan on the top half of the sketch book page, 3c. I used the value pattern on the top right, although the tree/bush at the left side of the road really ended up being a dark shape. I thought it looked a better balance as I was painting.
This time I painted entirely with a palette knife. I enjoy the thick and expressive paint!
Mary Gilkerson was an artist and teacher from South Carolina, whose art and videos I have liked for a while. She painted colorful landscapes using a palette knife. Sadly she passed away in April 2022.
The people in charge of her estate decided to offer her video classes to the public on YouTube at no charge. Thank you!
I have been following her ‘Composition, Color and Light’ course and it has been extremely helpful in learning how to compose a landscape, and in fact a painting of any subject.
She makes the process of developing a Notan (black and white value pattern) from a photograph understandable in a way I’d never seen before:
1. Develop a 3-value study of the scene in question.
2. Make several thumbnail variations pushing the mid-value to either black or white.
3. Choose the one that is most pleasing to you as the value pattern for your painting.
Below is my sketchbook showing this process, and indicating the value pattern I chose. But then I didn’t keep exactly to it, and I used strange colors, so I was not entirely happy with the painting above. I have since practiced quite a bit more and have some better results—in future posts!
8 x 8 ins, Oil on Linen Panel
I painted this from my front porch this afternoon, an exhilarating experience. It was a crisp, clear, windy December day. My focus was the large maple tree in the middle of the front lawn, and the way the nearly-setting sun was lighting it, although by the time I finished (an hour later) the light had pretty much gone from the tree.
I took a lot of artistic license with the view and completely removed the houses across the street (their complexity and presence did not add to my ideas about the tree), so this is not actually the view from our porch, but my ideas about the tree and the light this afternoon. I loved doing it.
Oil on canvas panel, 9 x 12 ins
Our third Plein Air class was in the middle of very quiet Amish countryside, near New Wilmington, PA. The three of us stood within in a fairly small area but all chose different views, so came away with three totally different paintings.
I liked these big trees overshadowing the farmhouse buildings, with the big barn a little closer to me. There were numerous Amish buggies coming and going, and horses being used to plow the fields, so almost the only noise was of horses’ hooves. Altogether a very peaceful three hours of painting.
For our second 3 hour lesson we went to a rural area and found a pumpkin field. One fascinating aspect of painting outdoors with other people is that we can stand in a small area together and produce totally different paintings!
My choice of view and subject was based on the pumpkins leading up to the white barns, which are silhouetted by the dark trees. I also liked including the distant hills. I had a strong sense of representing the feel of what was in front of me rather than the exact image. To that end I ‘moved’ the pumpkins around quite a bit!
Because we have temporarily moved (over the past month) to Western Pennsylvania (until Thanksgiving), I’ve become behind on the posts of paintings that I’d planned. I’m going to try to catch up a bit. !
These are all small (6 x 8 ins) sky paintings on canvas. I painted them earlier in the year, all from photographs I’d taken. I was experimenting with ‘feeling’ the color and trying to achieve that sky ‘glow’. These are more abstract than subjects I usually paint, and the freedom with shapes and colors was invigorating.
Oil, 8 x 10, canvas panel
This was a painting where I painted one shape of color, then the next one and the next one and so on, and when I stood back across the room–a sunlit rose had appeared!
marymayhewart 