Bicycles, 18x24", oil on panel.

I think this painting might be done. I wanted overall to have a very loose feel to it, but to have little areas that were sharply realistic without sacrificing the texture of the paint and brushstrokes. I plan to pursue more in this vein.

I’d love to get comments and critiques from those of you reading, so please, take some time and let me know what you think.

Spring Leaves, 11×14″, oil on canvas panel.

Well, today is another gorgeous spring day, and I’m lucky enough to be outside painting. I tried to capture the look of the sunlight coming through the young spring leaves on the small trees and bushes in this sketch. I think it worked rather well.

By the way, please feel free to leave critiques in the comments section. Much as I love to watch myself type, I’d like to see your thoughts too. I can take whatever cruel inhumane things you might have to say, so don’t worry about my feelings, I’ve got a thick skin. And what’s more, I’ll use your comment to make myself faster, stronger…a better painter all around.

Wave Study, 5×7″, oil on panel.

I’m attempting to get a better handle on what makes water look the way it does. Therefore, this is a small study of a tiny section of sloshing waves. Water is much more difficult to paint correctly than I realized.

Jones River Landing, 5×7″, oil on panel.

Well, this painting is a cautionary tale about not letting the sunlight hit your palette and canvas. While this painting looks great in the bright morning sun on an early spring day, it looks miserable under the studio lights used to photograph it. All of the depth and color is sucked out of the blue, and generally it looks poor. Lesson learned.

Tomorrow is another day.

Atlantic Path, 5×7″, oil on panel.

It’s really turning into spring rapidly around here, and the greens are getting a little brighter and more vivid.

This painting was made on a footpath that runs along the coastline rocks. It’s a great little feature of Rockport. Although this is technically private land, there is a long public footpath that stretches along the coast, allowing everyone and not only the people who can afford it, access to the natural beauty of the area. The paths are marked with small signs, but you kind of have to know that they exist, and in that way they’re a great local secret. As my wife and I get to know the area, the more we love it.

I’ve also been having a conversation with Jerry Sumpter over at Überart about the need for opinion in art criticism and the ways to dissect the aspects of painting in order to evaluate the artist’s achievement on each in turn. Morgan Meis at The Smart Set recently wrote about how art criticism has lost its ability to make proclamations on whether art is Good or Bad and he seems to be implying that currently the art critic’s role is more as anthropologist in the mind-world of the artist. I tend to agree with him, and certainly the proliferation of different styles and avenues for visual art have made the dividing line between Good and Bad art increasingly fluid or at least difficult to define. The appeal of the art critic as interpreter is obviously strong, but it edges dangerously close to becoming a way to invalidate any criticism: any art is good art if understood on its own terms.

However, if one dismantles the artist’s vehicle: message from form, technique from stylistic choices, one can evaluate each on its own terms and then reassemble them to form a critique that is not only takes the artist’s point of view into account, but is also objective on each facet of the whole work. Do you agree?

View from Seaside Cemetery, 5×7″, oil on panel.

Well, today I needed a change of pace, so instead of staying in my nice warm studio, I went out and froze my fingers to the marrow in the north wind off the Atlantic Ocean to get this little landscape. I’m pleased with the sky, but the land needs some serious work in my opinion. There are some pleasant things about the rocks in the foreground and I like the sea spray effects I managed to get, but there’s a lack of focal point that makes it suffer a bit. I think I’ll continue to do these landscapes this week and see if I can’t get something more interesting by Friday.

Also, an interesting aside. As I was walking home, a nice lady from the town asked if she could see the painting. I said sure, and set down my easel so she could take a look at it. “Oh, it reminds me of California! I know where that is, I have that exact painting on my living room wall!” I really didn’t have anything to say to that, but she finished up with, “But it’s not like California today, is it?” And no, it most certainly is not. So I agreed with her and shuffled off. Any ideas on how to respond to the normally inane blather you have to deal with when people stop you when they notice that you’re a -gasp- Painter?

Pearl Onion, 5×7″, oil on panel. Purchase here.

Well, here it is, Friday’s painting. I think this one is pretty nice. Everything turned out on it the way I’d hoped, so that’s good. Also, a friend told me that the reason my pictures were so dark was due to the difference in gamma settings between Windows and Mac machines, so I’ve set the image to use it’s own color profile, so let me know if the image looks better then the previous entries (if you’re using a Windows machine, that is.)

I’ve also been reading some nice books on Velázquez and Rubens. The two that I find most interesting and useful to painters are the one on Rubens called Drawn by the Brush, and the one on Velázquez called Technique of Genius. Great books. A little pricey, but you can get them used on Amazon for pretty cheap, and the information inside is well worth adding them to your library.

Hanko, 5×7″, oil on panel. Purchase here.

Here’s a little piece which I think has a couple of problems. It’s a little skewed in the drawing, and the color for the top of the hanko is poorly observed…or just too flat…I’m not exactly sure. I have to think this one over for a while, see what comes to me. I think I’ll experiment more with this lighting setup though, as I’ve obviously gotten used to the two setups I’ve had until now: a spotlight and the light from the north window. This setup was a pocket LED flashlight on the table.

Dropper Bottle, 5×7″, oil on panel. Purchase here.

Good morning. Today’s piece is a little green glass dropper bottle I have in my studio, and honestly it’s a pretty subtle piece, with the details being very hard to discern in the photo. I veered a bit from the paintings I’ve done so far in that I put some of the background in. I think it works ok from a distance, (or in a small photo) but something about it bothers me up close…perhaps to takes too much attention from the main item, which is so subtle to begin with? I’m not sure I can place my finger on it just now, but if I do figure out what’s bugging me, I’ll post an edit for you.

Candle Stub, 5×7″, oil on panel. Purchase here.

This small painting is another study in minimal paint application. You’ll notice that there’s a lot of the streaky imprimatura showing all over the panel, with some little bits covered with the proper table color. Honestly, the imprimatura and the table color were so close, I felt free to make the ground stand on it’s own. I think it forms a nice contrast.

I’m also happy with the grey color that shows the reflection on the wax on the top surface of the candle, and of course what’s not to love about translucence effects in any painting? Those little dull red bits were fun to paint.

Forty Cents, 5×7″, oil on panel. Sold.

Decided to do another painting of spare change, since I enjoyed painting the little penny in the last piece. I think this one turned out pretty well, although now that I look at it here, some of the highlights may not be bright enough. Or at least, they don’t show up well in the photo. Overall, it’s going well. I think I’m finally in a decent groove on this project.

Penny and Walnut, 5×7″, oil on panel. Sold.

Well, another day, another painting. After yesterday’s very simple subject, I thought I would tackle something slightly more complex today and put two objects on the model stand. I think this turned out well. I struggled a bit with the shell of the walnut, but I simply scraped off the offending paint and re-painted it, to nice effect. The penny turned out well, I think, and I’m pleased with both the color and the values of the shadows. They work nicely.

Nova Scotia Beach Stone, 5×7″, oil on panel. Sold.

Today’s piece is a little white beach stone that my wife collected (and now I’m forgetting where, it might have been on our trip to Nova Scotia.) Anyway, this piece is very high key, in a soft north light. I wanted something simple and pretty subtle today, and I think I got what I was after. I softened the back edge of the stone to help it recede and sharpened an edge on the front to help bring that forward. I tried to sharpen the edge à la Richard Schimd but my palette knife was too big to maneuver in the tiny space I needed to hit. I also made a slight darkening of the corners to give a little more depth to the background. All in all, I’m pretty happy with it.

Clothespin, 5×7″, oil on panel. Purchase here.

Sorry about the lack of a post yesterday. I was feeling a bit under the weather, and since my ability to concentrate is the first thing to go when I get sick, painting was the last thing on my mind. Anyway, this is a quick painting, only 40 minutes, and I think it’s pretty successful, although I might need a bit of dark at the bottom of the clothespin’s corner in shadow to help anchor it down and give it a little bit more weight. It seems to float around a bit in the shadow area where it doesn’t have that dark anchor of the shadow line…

Otherwise, I’m pretty happy with it. Remember you can always purchase these paintings on my etsy site, 1sqft.etsy.com.

Ok, it’s melodramatic to call it tragedy, but as I was putting the last few strokes into the background on this piece, literally seconds before it was done, it slipped out of the little jig I made for holding these panels on my easel, and fell forward onto my brush. Therefore, that area on the right side of the face of the dried-up lime is mashed and wonky because of that. I tried to even out the area, to salvage what I could, but it didn’t really work. Ah well, I guess it’s time to come up with a better jig.

Telephone, 5×7″, oil on panel. Purchase here.

Today’s painting is my cellphone, a lovely little piece of industrial design. Sad to say I don’t think I quite did it justice. The light is pretty good, there’s a problem with the bigger shadow, though. The drawing is off, and I think it has to do mostly with the lower right-hand corner of the light reflecting off the top of the cellphone. Fine curves are very tricky things. There are an infinite variety of ways to go slightly off, but your eye can always see that it’s not quite right. Perhaps that’s what led Sargent to declare that a portrait is a picture where something is wrong with the mouth. Those are very complex curves indeed.

Minidisc on Edge, 5×7″, oil on panel. Purchase here.

This is today’s image. One hour flat, and it turned out pretty well. I’m glad. The drawing of the ellipse is a little off, but overall, I’m pleased with the values and hues of the thing. I also managed to get a nice soft edge to my cast shadow, which pleases me. I have still to scan that silverpoint I did so that everyone can see it without thinking that they need glasses. I may get to that today, or later tonight.

Blue Sewing Box, 5×7″, oil on panel. Purchase here.

Well, another day another painting. This one is a small blue plastic box that holds a sewing kit. The background looks a lot more orange than it should, but this is a fair representation of it. This painting was done in 77 strokes in 45 minutes. Not too bad, but I’d like to get the stroke count down further. Looking at the image, I’m pleased with how the shadow turned out, very airy looking. The box turned out well. There are a few little things that could be remedied, like the overall sharpness of the edges around the perimeter of the box, must try and keep that in mind next time.

I also worked on a silverpoint drawing yesterday, this was the best photo I could get of it:

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Well, here’s today’s piece. Again, 5×7″ on a gesso panel. This one needs some scrutiny: I’m not quite sure how to think of it yet. It will need to sit on the shelf for a while until I can decide if it’s a success or not. I’m sticking to the plan of limiting my brushstrokes, but counting becomes difficult once I start getting into the painting. I’d say this one turned out to be somewhere in the 60-70 stroke range. More than the last one, but I think it’s a good effort for the complexity of the subject.

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This morning my wife and I head out to the car so that I can take her to the train station for her daily commute into work. I turn the key and the car struggles to start and sputters to a stop: the “empty” light had been on for a little bit, but I figured I had enough gas to get into town and drop her off and then get gas. Apparently not. So she was late and I felt like an ass.

Today’s painting is a little different. I’ve decided to try and focus on getting realism in as few strokes as possible. I initially set my goal for 10, which might be realistic once I have firmer control over my brushes and paint mediums so that I know exactly how the paint is going to grab, smear, etc, but nonetheless this approach cut down my time (60 minutes flat instead of the hour and twenty minutes I had been doing…) even though my stroke count was up near 50 this time. I think I gained quite a bit of ground in the effort, and though the drawing may be a little less exact, I think it’s a pretty good effort.

In looking at the piece, I think that the bottom half is lacking some roundness and I’m not sure if that’s due to the strength of that brushstroke cutting across the form, but that’s something I’ll need to work on. It’s interesting that incidental things like that can have such an impact on a painting. When I envision doing these things, I inevitably think of the color shapes as flat and consistent, even thought they almost never are. Clearly that’s a way of thinking I’ll need to remedy from now on.