Winter Woodland

Pardon the absence. The ‘day job’ has been all consuming in the last week. In these times of recession I’m not complaining, but it means very little time for anything else.

The last few paintings were produced as artwork for Christmas and/or greeting cards. In a way its good, occasionally (and ONLY occasionally), to have a purpose outside your own artistic self indulgence. Unlike most artists, I have absolutely no interest in trying to ‘make my living’ from my paintings. To do this would mean compromises, and to be commercially successful would possibly push the artist into following trends and fashions not in keeping with the preferred course. The starving artist in the garret is an image from a time when most of the population was also starving. Nowadays, the independently minded artist is the starving artist, not a good way to be working in any case. But of course there is always the wealthy patron…

Because of the way I’m recording the paintings at the moment (painting and palette in the same horizontal space) its difficult to produce a vertical shaped painting. A designer for the print industry (like myself) will sometimes crop an artwork to fit a particular layout. I will cut this painting (the image not the physical painting) into two vertical cards. The ‘double’ composition lends itself to this treatment and as cards they are less ‘aggressive’ than the original painting. This original composition was not intentionally created to be used in this way, the ‘day job’ guy decided it would be ‘commercially’ viable. This is an example of compromise for the purpose of commerce. Below are the two artworks which are ‘tamed’ sufficiently to be used as cards. The original was not ‘greeting card’ material.

Winter Woodland 2

Winter Woodland 1

There is a lesson to be learned from this. Painting on ‘loose canvas’ (un-stretched) will allow a painter to ‘cut down’ a painting conveniently, sometimes rescuing an otherwise unacceptable work. Its not a random slicing, but will require an artistic input on par with the effort of producing the original painting.

Here is the video of the painting. See you, hopefully soon.

Blue Christmas

This is a nice combination of colours with the dominant one being Prussian Blue. Its little wonder the overall colour of the painting is this strong bright blue. From a distance the blue would seem too much but I found as I enter this blue landscape it seems natural. I think this illustrates the importance of including a ‘spectrum’ of colour in a landscape. I will always have the red, yellow and blue represented by colours which fit into these groupings.

In this painting the blue skewed the colour into the blue end of the ‘spectrum’ and this is OK if there are yellows and reds there as well. How different this is from a ‘monochrome’ painting where a single colour only is used. An popular example of this type of painting are sepia sketches. No matter how ‘realistic’ the rendering, the element of ‘real world’ is not there. We are always conscious we are viewing a ‘drawing’.

This means I will never have less than three colours in a painting. With so few colours its important to know which colours ‘fit’ well together. Its only with experience that these combinations can be worked out. Not only must they look well together but they must also mix well together. An example of this is Indian Red. Its a brilliant rust red in the tube. But all mixes with this colour produce ‘dirty’ colours. Burnt Sienna is a similar colour, but the mixes are clean. In this painting the grey of the clouds is made from a mix of Burnt Sienna and Prussian Blue. The resultant grey is clean and vibrant enough for fluffy clouds.

Here is the video of the painting process. See you soon.