An outdoor painter by preference- (setting up on location to paint from life), the works of this blog will be frequent exercises painted from whatever strikes my fancy with intent to sharpen my eye, push and stretch my understanding of paint. Note that my links will include my larger artist's site, and latest available giclee prints at Image Kind.
Feel free to inquire to the availability of any works seen here.
We are going to have an absolute blast...best time ever. My lovely wife is going with me this time and we get to hang with the most awesome folks! My artist's website provides all the information you'll need to know, plus options to pay your registration early. Two workshops planned...one week followed by a weekend workshop. Special discounts for those that take the full week, or better yet the week AND the weekend.
...and here is a tourism video about ten minutes long to really really wet your appetite and super charge you!!! Unfortunately (or fortunately) it is a wider view video than the blog space provides, so simply click on the video as it gets under way and it will come up on YouTube. Then...after watching, hit your return button and come on back to my blog here and follow my workshop link to my website for more information!!! Looking forward to painting and working with YOU!!!
I've been a little amiss, busy is the word...and meant to put some work up on my "Will Paint 4 Gas" blog site...offering discounts and sales...and so, I have just added some work, and will be adding more shortly, and replacing some of the past offerings.
Difficult being satisfied with just the right adjustments on photoshop to get every color and value right here. Might have to retake photo of work outside, but it is fairly close...
I tweaked anatomy...pushed values and color, worked on hair, added a barrette, worked on garment...and believe I'm very near finishing...at least in concept and aim where I wanted enough sense of realism in an abstract environment...which I think I have accomplished. This is a gift for my wife...as we add to a wall of her painting that of her grandchildren. We will add more paintings of course as the vision of our own son's expand. Hee heee.. Three or four years, and it will be Addison's turn... 8^)
This is Jason and Kat's younger daughter...just a beautiful spirited little girl, who loves to dance!!!
As you will see, the eye on the left will appear different from the first post of this work, as I began working on the second eye (the left eye)...I realized I had the positioning of the original eye too far left, making the face too wide.
Painting itself, is a means of broadening the scope of one's seeing and arriving at some clarity. A journey of exploring and discovery as well as whatever expertise we represent, I suppose. To begin this session, I mixed up more midvalue flesh color/tone, painted over the near dry tacky face preferring to paint wet into wet...which gives me much control I think. Here is my palette-
Now while I have advanced this much farther, I have to bring the left side of the head over more, the forehead, work more accuracy in shape to the eyes yet...but, am satisfied that I am achieving the level of realism I want that will command attention of the viewer's eye...while allowing me to be as free and unfinished with the peripheral areas of the painting. Suggestive...and even near abstract...
And...here is a closeup of the face, using a judicious more cautious building up of rendering form, but the final work will entertain some paint strokes having some sense of spontaneity to them. The impression should be that the work was effortless to produce...
all images clicked on will bring up larger view...
Time to switch gears, subject-wise...for a moment, as I've been wanting to paint another granddaughter as a gift to my wife for her wall. This is Ava Dawn...loves dance...and no fear of crowds!
I began with a brownish tone, used a rag to wipe out basics of face...then mixed up a midvalue flesh color/tone. I cover the whole of the face area with this midvalue color/tone, then paint lights and darks into it...
I painted that over the wiped out area..the wet into wet painted darks and lighter values directly.
Wish I would have had time tonight...but, this does go rather quickly.
Calling this done...pushed darks in foreground rocks..a few limbs, pushed a few darker values in the water...a few touch ups here and there, and believe I'm done...
A chance to paint a bit more today, and the aim is a painterly statement that finds its sense of realism in limited refinement, color mood versus areas of understatement.
Started a new one today...another experiment on less is more...the goal to refine the focal area and essentials and allow the peripheral outlying areas to work with color mood and abstract suggestionism....(I made that last word up!!!)
Started with a warm undertone...then wiping out some lighter areas and negative space...
This is the result of the first session effort, seen smaller as though backed away...
Here a closeup of brushwork and pigment application. Remember all images are clickable to see larger...
Finally here is the work a bit larger after first session effort...and I'll add more as this one develops. The aim once more is to determine what is essential, what receives greater refinement...and what is allowed to be more abstract in nature and statement...
Many paint because it is their one resort to communicate with hope of eloquence, visual communication. Van Gogh...went from trying to imitate his father's life as a minister...finding he did not have the eloquence of speech...worked thru his many personal rejections in life, to find he had a voice when it came to paint. His faith yet compelled him, though he was a complex restless spirit, tormented with illness and ideas.
A couple excellent books not widely known nor read are on my shelves which I highly recommend,
"Van Gogh and God- A Creative Spiritual Quest" by Cliff Edwards
and....
"At Eternity's Gate" by Kathleen Powers Erickson
As a public school teacher...and as a university student, I was never exposed to a possible spiritual investigation and understanding of this complex artist because the stand of secularism would require nothing but a secular expose. I would argue one doesn't truly get Van Gogh without such.
At any rate...those that know me well, well enough know that a spiritual initiative drives my need to paint which over the years has taken me through the journey of painting to attain reputation, painting to attain gain...to where more today, I paint to live...to celebrate living. To maintain a childlike heart of inquiry and awe with the world and beyond, a heart that then resolves to nurture a particular thankfulness.
I am grateful of course for sales, grateful to have enjoyed the privilege of association with many of my peers, to even encourage and help foster growth, but these days I am cautious with the power that celebrity status has to cloud one's better sense of themselves. I won't go further here at this time to address that...but now brings me to this which I hope will be found reflective, a muse...an encouragement for some that follow my blog.
Some I'm sure can relate to that sense if you paint on location...that while in command of your medium, and the moment to create your world on canvas...you are touching the hem of beauty, a sense of something bigger...higher. Its a moment to celebrate, yet to be aware and humble.
Its like I can sense God at times whispering that my life long path without my knowing it has been a purposed journey...a training, but not as an ends...but a preparation for a beginning. Like He is smiling, over my shoulder aware of my cultivated childlike exploration with paint...saying, "You think this is something, WAIT til you see what I have in store!"
So...I am speaking to hearts and imaginations this Sunday morning, before I head out to the national forests shortly today. And doing so by ending with this short video on the Hubble Ultra Deep Space project, where on two different occasions the telescope was allowed to orbit earth focused on specific apparent dark nothingness for ten and eleven days...just to see what might be seen, if anything...
If this doesn't make you feel small...I don't hardly know what will. If it doesn't make you smile when like me you find yourself entertained just to paint a patch of dried reeds in a wetland shore eeking out beauty from the mundane, to imagine what sites must exist out there in all those billions of galaxies...
In the seventy short plus years time we average living on this planet, between the news, marketing, education, paying bills, it is so easy to fall into thinking this world is everything...but, what if it is not? What if our exit from this world...is really but an entrance to the next, and what if our painting and creative exploits here turn out to be training...?
I believe this video was produced in wide format...so won't all fit in the space of this blog. Just click on the video near the bottom right and bring it up to view on YouTube to see in full. You don't want to miss this!!!
Near finished...doing a bit more work today...want to obscure the right side a bit more...keep the focal areas on the lower left quandrant rule of third position, the point...the dock, that leaning pine...
Time now then to obsess on edges, negative space sky holes, suggested branches/limbs...and tweak values...
Enculturation imbued with print media & tv means we live in a 2nd reality, one the lens sees. Lifeless shadows, static detail rank accurate to life. My renaissance from 20 years in studio came after taking my paints outdoors. Several things happened- I saw color as only an artist can see, (painting being the deeper way of seeing); I was overwhelmed with all to be worked out in short order; thirdly, that taunt of a feeling I knew nothing of painting! Such would send many back to the pretense of the familiar, but I’m not good hiding from myself that which I’m not able to succeed. By right…I should be able to paint outdoors, and was going to do this were it to kill me. Kill me it did! So complete was that death, I could no longer aspire to paint as artists I had admired. Their works now lifeless, labored, detailed, realistic, yes...but no sense of REAL'ness. I wish I had started nature’s schooling much younger, but lives are like books. Not one chapter stuck to one narrative. Life can be filled with many chapters. It can have interesting twists and new directions, and I say go for it! *See my book on landscape painting, and new DVDs available thru “Books & Videos” at larryseiler.com
You can now purchase high quality prints of many of my works seen on this blog, with options of giclee canvas, matting and framing, greeting cards...all from Fine Art America. Follow this link here to my page, just to spend time checking it out if nothing else!
