Tuesday, January 08, 2008

It's proving to be an exciting start for my New Year

Since I posted my goals for this New Year, I feel a new excitement with my art. Being very happy with my watercolor's, I have never wanted to experiment much with other mediums, but, over the last 6 months I've gained a new interest in oil painting. I've been reading a few books on oils and with my New Year's goal of 50 1-hour paintings I thought oils would be fun to learn and if I did some of my one hour paintings in oils, I just might learn faster.
Anyway, that's my hope. These are four 1-hour paintings I've painted so far. Each of these are small, only 5" x 7 ". So far, I have not felt limited by the timer being set for the one hour like I thought I would. Given more time, I know I would do more to finish these small paintings, but I think I've done ok with the given amount of time.

Although I really want to paint more landscapes this year, I had these limes that I thought would make a nice still life. I just knew with my experience with watercolor's oils would be easy. After all, you can go back in and correct your mistakes easily right?


I am finding that with each oil I paint, I attempt to overcome what I felt was a mistake of the previous oil. In the first I should have cropped the image, and corrected or focused more on the shadow side of the limes. In the second lime painting (oil still) I remembered to crop the image when I drew my sketch but didn't do well with my values.


I enjoyed painting two different paintings of the same subject, so I decided to do two 1-hour paintings of a clove of garlic. I found this subject very hard to capture the correct values and the shadow side. There was a shadow side, but being so light, I had a hard time putting down the correct values. And with this first garlic, what's with centering it so well?


When I started the second garlic painting I thought first of all I would correct the way I centered it on the first painting and maybe set it at a different angle. When I was done I couldn't believe what I saw. The values are still
off and it didn't change much in placement. Go figure.


These have been so enjoyable to paint. I love the idea of the timer. I find it freeing and I think it is because I know I have an excuse if it doesn't turn out "perfect". What a concept! Also, I am really enjoying painting from life. And, I only have 46 more painting's to go for my goal of 50 1-hour painting's....... *wink.

4 comments:

  1. These are WONDERFUL Nancy! And I am so envious of you being able to do these in an hour!!!!! I barely get something sketched in an hour!!! You're doing so well with your oils!! Brava for your courage to dive into something new -- and to go at it so well!!

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  2. Great idea to put a timer. That way we may take our art more seriously than treating it as a leasure activity. More over we can know our limits and strech our limits. I am going to try this. Loved your paintings. Best wishes.

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  3. I like the idea of 50 one-hour paintings in the year -- and you're off to a great start! The bottom garlic clove, in particular -- really really good!

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  4. The second garlic clove is painted really well. Repeating the same paintings like the old Masters did, is a good way to 'get' the subject.
    Try using a colored cloth beneath the white garlic for the contrast you're looking for.

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