Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

A Good Week






Two weeks ago I had a really good week painting. Five days of class and open studios and four good and one fair painting. It is rare I am this pleased by my work. It didn't last. The next week I had health issues and didn't paint a stroke. That's the epitome of a bad week. No paintings at all!

The Successful Failure

I try to learn from my failures but it is tough. If I could see what's wrong I could fix it. Right?
But sometimes, if I go back and look later I can figure it out. This time I took the time to get some help and Terry Miura was kind enough to lend me his eye. I started out with the concept of the Perky Young Lady and I morphed the drawing to push the concept. I ended the initial painting session with a figure that had some charm but a painting that did not make it. 24hours later even I could see I had distorted the torso too much . Terry helped me see that I had also erred in that I used the tonal approach (large value shifts between the light and the shadow) in some areas and the colorist approach (little value shifts but more color shifts between light and shadow) in other areas. The result was a schitzo painting that did not hang together. After spending just a few minutes over multiple days I feel like I greatly improved the painting but mostly like I learned a lot! It really showed in my next paintings.