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............