Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Deshka River...Alaska, land of the midnight sun, Gouache 6"x 6"




















Finished this gouache tonight, filming for Go To Meeting...and now it'll be time spent on Final Cut Express editing, producing video...

8 comments:

Kurt said...

I see a entryhere for the next6x6 show it will definitely sell.

Larry Seiler said...

Having missed the Higbee exhibition a couple years now, I did come to think I should paint a number of 6"x 6"s since painting is what I'll do regardless, and then have some works to consider show per chance I shake the webs off my brain and enter timely next showing...

Oils...gouache, we shall see... haha..thanks

duanetheartist said...

Nice painting! Love the light!

Helder FC Vieira said...

Hi Larry, long time no see :)
Love the oils and everything but... Gouache is definitely your medium. A wonderful little gem!

Larry Seiler said...

thanks Helder...I get that a lot with water media...acrylics for near 40 years, folks told me again and again that's my medium. Then when I did my share of watercolor...but, I'm very hard of hearing.. 8^)

even had a few tell me of late that digital painting is now my media...

I'm just an overgrown kid...love to play with pushing color around..
appreciated...

Larry Seiler said...

Should probably say too...that with any medium I do play with, it is what I've learned painting oils that drives how I approach.

when I painted professionally girding up my wildlife art reputation using acrylics, it would take me 200-250 hours to complete a painting. Painting quite thin, semi-transparent strokes of color/value built up in line hatch, cross hatch methods...that resulted in strong realism. Such would not work when I took my paints outdoors and found myself facing a 2 hour maximum time constraint before the light changed the scene radically.

So...I had to push...which started with acrylics and an impasto thickening and extended drier (gelex)...and then to oils, which by nature are richer in color and thicker. That "immediacy" of what plein air demanded earmarked what would become that supposed "style" folks tell me I have. I don't know that artists easily recognize their signature style, but I do believe we onlookers can see it in other's work. Isn't that odd how that works. We are just too objectively close to our own work I'm thinking.

So...when I paint digitally...I leave spots of color, when I paint with gouache, I leave spots of color. Some medium has a "look" that differs from each, (naturally)...and probably accounts to what compels.. Unless one goes in with a clean small round brush and just water to lift an edge of a color edge put down by gouache it has a certain edgy'ness to it, like a stroke. I call it...something like imagining painting with liquid pastels...and if there were such a thing, it would be "gouache!" 8^)

But, when I settle into the comfort of my home, the gouache is clean...no major messes, no major odors, and thus is spouse friendly. I use the medium almost as if I were pretending it were oils, and I was practicing...

Jeff Mahorney said...

I'm amazed Larry. I'm nuts about these gouache paintings. This is exactly how I want to paint. Once again you show me the way brother :)

Larry Seiler said...

thanks Jeff...I'm having fun...aiming to find how bare bones I can afford to get...just enough essential to pull it off. Like a game...and I know you understand that...

Funny too... I think we always see something in someone's work, rarely our own...so, I'm surprised when I get a comment such as yours, feeling like I'm nowhere wherever there just yet... 8^)

thanks