"Paintings With Personality"

Here is a young man I saw on a water bus in Amsterdam, Netherlands. I loved the way he was sitting there silhouetted by the light and his arm propped on a table, just thinking. I only exhibited the painting once and sold it that night.

            ‘Honey’ and I just got back (the reason I couldn’t post last Thursday). We were in Virginia helping our son and his wife move into their new home. Anything they didn’t want the movers to put on the truck went to the back bedroom where ‘Honey’ and I were sleeping. I walked back there Friday evening, tripped over something and fell flat on my back in the middle of a bunch of boxes. I wonder how it is that someone can fall forward and land on their back?

            Even more importantly, I wonder how we can have a beautiful start on a painting and end up landing flat on our faces with a dreadful and depressing crash. It is critical that we keep our work strong, interesting and different and there are even more things we need to think about in order to make the right decisions about our works in progress.

My ideas on the subject are listed below:

1. Stand back and look at the painting – It is important that we look and think while painting. A lot of problems can be identified before beginning to paint but we must always keep an eye on the painting and let it speak to us. Thinking and looking are more important than the painting process.
2. Be intuitive – Many things can be planned ahead but space must be left for imagination. We need to be open to making changes, revising what we planned if the painting calls for it. There are times when the entire painting might need to be changed. When using a photo reference we need to remember it is a “resource”, the painting itself is more important. Photographs record what is there but can’t change color, value, shapes, or omit details. Our job is to create something entirely new and “intuitive”. Let the art explode!
3. We haven’t enlisted our viewers – One of the best ways to catch our viewer’s interest is to tell a story with our paintings. Have you made the story clear enough for your viewers to understand? Do your viewers feel the emotion of the story you are telling? Art that speaks to us moves from being good to great art. We can’t control the reactions of our viewers and they can be as different as green apples and red meat.
4. The shapes are bad – When we say shapes in art we aren’t talking about rectangle, square, circle, and etc. We are talking about forms, created by the painter, that look any way the artist chooses in order to make a good design. A painting should not have more than 15 shapes in small, medium and large sizes. We can make shapes by connecting shadows, middle values, lights, and objects. By doing so we simplify them into a single area and create unity in our paintings.  Creating shapes and leaving out all the small details keeps the work from becoming finicky.
5. Not enough contrast – When we look at great art we see contrasts in shape, edges, color, line, temperature and “value”. Many painters, especially watercolor artists, have difficulty with value. If our middle value is too light the dark value will appear too black. Conversely, if the middle value is too dark the light value appears too bright.
6. The painting is overworked – Whether or not a painting is overworked is a personal thing. There are artists who work loose and those who work tight whose favorite part of a painting is the detail. Whichever way we paint, to know when it is time to stop and keep from overworking we can: Step back and think, set it aside for a few days, turn it upside down or sideways, or look at it in the mirror. When our brushes start getting small it is probably time to stop before we end up exhausting the piece. If we find ourselves fiddling with small areas, then they are possibly being overworked. When our paintings take forever to finish we are probably overworking them?  

A friend and I went to Cape Cod on a week long painting trip. The young woman above was a maid in the hotel where we stayed. We asked her to sit for us one night and she agreed. It was a delightful evening.

When you have a problem in your work, don’t quit or make yourself crazy. Put it someplace for a few days, a place where you can see it and take a look at it now and then. You’ll begin to see exactly what the painting needs.

Let’s hear your ideas about how to solve problems while painting. Comment below.

The Nicest Way to View Art