Inspired by Arnold Lowery

Certain things draw you to a picture, painting or the style of an artist. After viewing a number of paintings on WetCanvas by Arnold Lowery, I was drawn to his style, flow and creative ideas in his paintings. I especially like his "action" paintings of the sea. For those of you who aren't familiar with Arnold, he is an artist from Wales and as you can imagine, is inspired by the sea. A few weeks ago I purchased his instructional book Sea and Sky in Watercolour and I also got the DVD to go along with it. It is a really helpful book full of ideas using his techniques. What I have learned is something that I will be able to use in my paintings, but with tweeking to my own style. The DVD is a very helpful tool to actually see him painting.

The painting above is a rendition of one of Arnold's paintings titled "Cliffs" in his book. This is my version of it and I think it is similar. I made a few changes to it though. This is a smaller painting on an 8x10 Conrad Watercolor paper, 300 gsm or 140 lb, Cold Press. I hope that one day I will be able to make it to Wales to attend one of Arnold's classes. Your comments are always welcome and I appreciate any feedback regarding any of my paintings, pictures or the site in general.

Sunflowers, Sunflowers, Sunflowers!

I have always loved Sunflowers. I will venture to say that they are my favorite flower. There is something bright, cheerful and invigorating about them. There are so many various types, colors and shapes and they are all so beautiful. It is amazing when you are driving through the Tuscan Region of Italy and you are surrounded by fields of Sunflowers on both sides.

This is a watercolor that I copied from a Shirley Trevena painting appropriately titled "Sunflowers" pictured on the left . I saw this in Hazel Sloan's "Flowers in Watercolour" book and I was immediately attracted to this painting. Her painting is a 4x4". The one that I have painted is 6x7". The picture on the right is my interpretation of her painting and my main reason I chose this was the loose style and the vibrant colors. It is a real challenge to get the colors just as they are in the original painting. As stated in other posts, when you copy other artists work, it helps you improve and I have seen the improvement with my own eyes over the last 2 months. The works I copy are for my own enjoyment and I use them as exercises to better my talents.

If you are interested in seeing more of Shirley's work you can visit her site at http://www.shirleytrevena.com/

Study pieces, Art lessons and Learning from others

It has been a while since I posted last. I have had a number of things going on lately, so not all my time has been dedicated to painting. I recently took a short trip to Paris, France for 3 days and it was very nice. Not Nice, nice. Sorry, just a joke. There is a lot of beautiful things to see and a lot of inspiration as well from all the major sites such as the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, the Louvre.......ah yes the Louvre. What a wonderful place of inspiration and perspiration. It is a large place, but worth it. There are so many other Art Museums in Paris that I could have spent all 3 days in them, but I wanted to see other things. It was raining a bit while we were there, but it makes you stop and look at things while waiting for the rain to stop. I saw a lot of beautiful reflections off of the brick/stone streets from the rain and at night, the Seine River is just beautiful with all the buildings lit up.

Which brings me to my first painting. Reflections in Water. This is my first subject that I have been trying to learn more about and tackle by painting and copying/mimicking other painters to see how they have gone about painting their view of reflections. This subject is a work in progress and one I want to get better at. This is a scene from Venice of a painting by an Italian painter. His painting was originally done in Oil and I took a cropping of the original painting only to work on the water portion. This is on a 9x11 inch sheet of Arches Cold Press(Rough) 300 gsm/140 lb paper. I am very pleased the way it turned out. This was just a study piece rather than a painting that I was intending to "keep", "frame" or "sell". I learned a lot from this painting about reflections and how to approach them from a drawing perspective and from a painting perspective. I will continue to copy other painters reflection type paintings in order to improve. This is my goal. I don't like to copy other peoples work, but in reality, this is the only way to improve and learn.

My second painting is of an apple using a wax resist technique. This was taken from an exercise in a book by Ray Smith called The Artist's Handbook. Of course it doesn't detail every step, but it is decent in describing what to do. I would have preferred a bit more explanation in the steps, but I managed. This was my first attempt using wax resist. For those of you who may be unfamiliar with Wax Resist, it is a technique in which a white crayon or white wax candle is used to highlight the areas where you want the direct light to show on the subject. It also forces you to think much in advance to block out the areas that you want highlighted before you start your painting, rather than at the end of your painting like with oil or acrylic painting. After you block out the highlights, you then lay down your first wash, let dry and then add subsequent washes & blocking and drying, etc. It is a timely process to build up the color, but the effect works well. I look forward to working with this again in the future.

The third exercise was of an orange or rather two. This was a quick painting, but I was able to use different tones of orange......actually I mixed Cadmium Red and Cadmium Yellow and in some areas I used a Yellow Ocher. The shadow was fun to work on and I used Burnt Sienna and French Ultramarine Blue. I didn't finish this exercise and it is obvious when you see what looks like a floating orange in the background. Since I didn't apply the shadowing or darker tones to ground the orange, it looks as if it is floating. I may get around to fixing it, but then I may not.

The last exercise was one I copied from a painting of my Art instructor. OH by the way did I mention that I started taking some watercolor lessons? If not, I have now taken 3 lessons and I have some mixed feelings. The class setting is not exactly to my liking. There are 6-7 people all working on different mediums and different projects, so there is really no cohesiveness to the class. One may be working on pastels and another on acrylics or watercolors or drawing. So if I get to spend 15 minutes with the instructor in a 2 hour class, that is normal. Also if someone asks a question, not all people benefit from the question as if everyone were working on the same medium. Unfortunately it seems that is the way most classes are taught here in Malta. Most, not all. I have learned a number of things from my instructor, but I have to say that copying other artists work has helped me improve most. I will try a few more classes to see if it is something I want to continue. I think I would be better off in a class as described above or even one on one. Back to the exercise. These flowers in a vase were fairly simple to sketch and paint. It took me a couple hours to complete everything, but it was a good learning experience to match as closely the colors to the original painting. I am very pleased with it. It is on a 9x11 inch sheet of Arches Cold Press(Rough) 300 gsm/140 lb paper and I did highlights with a fine liner art pen.

I have enjoyed all of these exercises and just over the past 2 weeks I have seen the improvement in my work. Not to boast, but others have commented as well. I can see it with my own eyes so I believe I am on the right path. Now if I only had more time to paint. Hmmmm............