Duane (ism's) or progression with a paper towel

This week, I have been practicing: "Finding the sharpest edge and the softest edge where it dissolves;
Trying not to hide my trail of how I got from a to b;  Pushing and pulling with color; Being messy on purpose" using paper towels to get forms quickly.  I chose the paper towel over palette knife for finger control and to use less paint.  I don't mind messy, but sticky is icky.  I haven't got a knife that is flexible enough.  Yet!

Working from a photo, I painted cows under dappled light.  In order not to get caught up in the details too soon, the 8x11 photo was about 5 feet away.  After setting out my limited palette, I took one half sheet of paper towel and started placing shapes onto my roughly gridded 11x14 canvas.  I'm still not sure about a couple of things, like the nose on the gold cow, but the distance makes it hard to discern.
It was so much easier to see the shape of the nose on the spotted cow.
This was good practice.  I used more paint than usual and tried to leave my brush strokes visible. Important!  To get the cows curious, you have to sing to them.  I sing "You are my sunshine".  ;-)

1. Grid and start coloring

2. more shapes and values  still with paper towel

Distant photo

  

The cows are starting to shape up. I'm refining loosely with brush!

Curious cows   Finished?

Re-tuning the brain

Self Portrait, Fairfield Porter

Pink house F P.

I spoke about Duane Keiser's class and how he had us return to basics.  I think we were all saying to ourselves, what do you mean, basics!  Here is how it went.
He set up a long rectangular table in the center of the room with our easels surrounding.  On the table were a lot on still life possibilities, fruit, tall bottles, saki jug, flowers, large and small, not arranged specifically for a person to choose and say I will do, so and so.  Our goal, after watching a  Fairfield Porter slide show, was to view the items and paint exactly what we saw.  We could choose short distance, long distance, the items were to be flatly painted.  We were to loosely put in shapes then work on some values.
Duane had prepared some gessoed paper and I have learned, Class=paint on the paper!  No masterpieces coming from class, just good training.

Approximately 12 x 16

The rough scraped out painting to the left gives you an idea of the separation and type of unconnected items on the table. The flowers in the right hand corner were from another bunch in a vase out of my sight. I added the apple shape to replace the wine bottles I had already painted- below.
The vase with the clematis is very close to me; the bottles toward the far edge of the blue tablecloth.  Everything is flat with no real dimension.  Tomorrow, I will tell how we blocked in; used a palette knife and paper towel as a paint brush.  Stay tuned!

about 6x7.

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Sketching at the farm on a sunny and windy day.  

This week I am taking/monitoring a class with Duane Keiser, who is know for his inventive selling of artwork on the internet.  Duane teaches art at University of Richmond and Randolph Macon College in Virginia. 

 Each day is a new challenge to open our brain and he won't tell us what each day will bring until that day.  So far we've had a Fairfield  Porter challenge and a palette knife challenge.  Yesterday, I painted from the palette knife painting, bringing it up to a real painting.  Today is a mystery, yet to be solved.  

It will be sad to say goodbye to Duane because he has made the lessons fun, and eye-opening and showed us some tremendous artwork that he has painted.  Check out his website and be prepared to be blown away. 

This afternoon, I will be sketching and greeting at the Garden Tour. The house is Turmeric and I can't wait to paint that color!  Pat

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