All "Fine Art and Painting" Features
John Taft Painting Spotted in the Wild
Call me an art stalker. I was happily reading Matthew Innis’ Underpaintings Blog when I saw his recent story about visiting the American Masters Show and Sale at the Salmagundi Club in New York City. I knew my friend and artist John Taft was hanging there again this year so I combed through the pictures to see [...]
Picture Perfect Paintings #1: Shooting in RAW
I don’t have the perfect formula yet but I would like to have it. Trying to capture the true essence of a painting with our cameras is a somewhat tricky proposition. Even if we do an amazing job capturing the painting, we really don’t know if the person viewing it will have a calibrated monitor [...]
May 2010 Challenge Study – Oil on Panel
I am leaving for San Francisco in the morning so I wanted to try and get a study of the May painting challenge in before I left. This really did not take too long and I am happy with the result. I painted this as a relatively quick study from a cropped version of the [...]
May Challenge Composition Options
In case you are feeling a bit overwhelmed by the complexity of the May challenge photo, I wanted to provide a few sub-compositions for you to consider as well. I think each of these cropped versions of the photo would make nice paintings and not take a millenium to complete. If you are looking for [...]
Sedona Sunrise Oil Painting
With an amazingly busy week of work coming up I thought I would get my submission done this weekend for the April Challenge. As I was laying this out, I thought I was taking on too much. Trees and bushes give me fits and about half the painting is of such things! What’s more, rocks [...]
Digital Simplification and the Golden Ratio
One of the hardest things for me as a new painter is simplifying a scene for the canvas. It seems that landscapes in particular present so much information that it is very difficult to figure out what to leave in and out of a painting. One of the Kevin Macpherson books I read recommended using [...]
Steve Atkinson Demo
I thought I would pass along that Steve Atkinson is building a nice demo over on his blog that you may like. I have recently started approaching my own paintings in a similar way with a tight drawing and thin wash. Steve has some nice work to share and I recently saw some of his [...]
April 2010 Challenge – Additional Reference Photo!
Hi all. For those that have already seen the April Painting Challenge, I wanted to let you know that I have added another reference to give you some flexibility in the composition to add some foreground elements. I have also added this photo to the original challenge page for your convenience.
Tales from the Road – Scottsdale Art Auction
OK, surprise number one was seeing my best friend from sixth grade on the plane to Phoenix. I had not seen him in about 20 years! Surprise number two, seeing the auction version of my last painting acquisition at the Scottsdale Art Auction! I knew this painting was going to auction because Jay Moore was [...]
“Portovenere View” Oil Painting
In Italy last summer, to escape the Cinque Terre tourist crush, we stayed just south of the five famous fishing villages in a town called Portovenere. It’s about a 20 minute cab ride on a twisty hillside road from La Spezia. The town was home to mostly Italian tourists, had a laid back atmosphere, and [...]