I worked on Booth at the Fair these past two days. It’s starting to move my way. I can struggle with paintings for a variety of reasons, sometimes technical, sometimes who knows what. This painting hit a groove straightaway and began to slide into place, except I didn’t want it to go that direction. Now, like…
Odds and ends. Today, I finished the landscape (somewhere around Monterey) and worked on the figure with the striped shirt (my wife Kathleen). It still needs work. Both are watercolors. The pen and ink drawing of the figure behind the landscape is on bristle board. My watercolor kit. The bottom drawer contains watercolor tubes. I…
Even though the winter was mild, we are just now at the beginning of the boating season. The Betty Jane is the middle boat in this photo. It’s shrink-wrapped like its winter-storage neighbrors. Shrink wrapping protects the boats during winter storage and, as you can see, it’s commonly done in marinas along Lake Erie in…
It’s unusual to get rain showers in February in NE Ohio. Normally, the only precipitation we experience this time of year is snow–a lot of it. But the warm weather, 70+, was accompanied by driving, slashing rain. My son urged me to test the low-light capabilities of my new Nikon D750 camera. Have a look. This flashless photo…
I’ve always approached painting as a process of carving away and revealing, the way I imagine a sculptor approaches sculpting. Not modeling but carving. I bring this up because this unfinished painting, Sub Rosa, is a pretty good example of my approach. There are many ways to talk about painting, of course. I used to talk about…
Sub Rosa, the unfinished painting on the easel, is moving along. The underpainting is nearly done. The white-seeming ground visible throughout the painting is actually a middle-ish gray tone. Compare it with your eyes to the dab of white in the middle of the palette. Sub Rosa is based on photos taken during last year’s Festival…
It’s curious how problems can disappear. Sometimes when I take up a painting that I struggled with, the solution is blindingly obvious. How was it that I struggled? Today was like that with Victory Park I. I had struggled with some passages but today everything fell into place. I had a healing brush; everything was…
Main Street #1 is another painting based on Vermilion’s Main St. I already finished Main Street #2 even though I started it after #1. I plan several more paintings around the same theme. I’m still not satisfied with parts of it so until I am, I’ll keep at it.