I have been painting most of the day, much of last and this week. This is the 'season' for art exhibits, at least as far as painting shows go. My painting, "Mutual Admiration," was accepted into a juried national exhibit, to be in Farmington, NM. I think this is the first national exhibit I've entered with my oils, though I used to exhibit nationally with watercolors a bit. I, of course, have exhibited a great deal in my main medium of tapestry.
So now, with that piece to be gone all summer, I have been frantically trying to get another done enough to enter in the exhibit that I will be entering "The Youngest Groomsman" in, as I would like to enter two pieces. This is because a juror once told me she didn't even seriously consider entries when an artist had only entered one piece, as she wanted to make sure the artist could create more than one good work. (Horrid, but true cautionary tale!)
So - to that end - I have been working on the "Penn Cove" painting. I now have the canvas all covered, at least, but know I will need to look at it with fresh eyes tomorrow, to see what 'editing' needs to be done. Right now, all I can see is green - too much green. Green with envy? Moldy green? Whatever! I'm quite fed up with green! Do you know how difficult it is to get variations of green? Dark and light values of green; yellow and blue variations of green; blacks and blues and browns that read as green? Well, I'll tell you... Kermit was right. It ISN"T easy being green!
The canvas is still wet, which gives the picture a glossy, blurry look that I can't seem to over-ride. PhotoShop will only do so much - it won't dry wet canvas. It also won't fix the one HUGE compositional problem with this painting, that may make it un-enterable in any competition. Do you know what the problem is?
4 comments:
Hmmmmmnnnn.....in my art classes, my instructor might say the tree on the left is bent too much and pointing directly at the boat disturbing the peace of the scene.....or maybe the boat is placed directly under the break in the mountains in the distance and maybe the boat should have been moved over to the right a little....my biggest tussle with him was when I painted a closed fence in a farm foreground thereby not letting the viewer enter into the pasture....he's always right....from Janet on the East Coast to whom you taught the mysteries of weaving vertically or sideways
Hmmm. Those are some good points. But I think the bend in the tree DOES move your eye down to the boat, then the eye moves to the break in the bushes, up the right side, and in a circular way through the sky and back to the left trees. Circular movement is good. So that's not what I was thinking of - tho' your comments made me notice that I DO need to add some more darks to key spots. That's still not the one BIG compositional problem, though. Maybe, if no-one spots it, it won't be as big a problem as I think it is! Here's me crossing my fingers...X
Maybe that the empty sky in the center opens to the top of the canvas. It feels like much of the energy in the painting escapes straight out the top; that's where my eyes end up. It might also be a function of the light-dark split between the ground and the sky? --Ry
Very good points, also, Ryan, and close to what I see as the main problem. Your observations have been so educational and interesting, I think I'll wait until tomorrow to 'reveal' the problem, to see if anyone else can spot it. (I hope I typed this well. Possum has his nose on the keyboard, trying to help!)
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