Thursday, April 12, 2012

From Demo, to demo, to plein air, to sold



Wow, what a great group of artists in St Simons workshop hosted by Anderson Gallery. Thanks y'all. Sometimes we just have to improvise and not all paintings have a normal life. This one had the quirkiest history.
 I confess I always struggle with shapes. I teach an advanced class were we break down the painting process including shapes. In that class I quickly did a tonal of this 16 by 20 marsh scene with no color and not looking at anything, it helps me with my struggle to force myself to be creative and try to get a good design.
Than at St Simons workshop I had already done a beach, cloud demo and some of the fine artists decided they wanted to paint marshes also, so I quickly painted on this tonal in a parking lot without being able to see the real marsh colors. I hate that and it does not work well, but it got a demo done so some could proceed to the marshes and see the real colors. And thanks to Fred , who gave me a bike to get to both the beach and marsh people I was able to adjust artists' paintings on site.
Finally, after the St Simon's workshop I was able to relook at my colors, which I hated , and paint more accurately from life, repaint water reflections and make other adjustments , including more subtle detail up front. The first one in this blog is the finished painting, and I felt really fortunate it sold within 24 hrs in the gallery.
I hope showing you my mistakes and changes maybe helpful , from the emails I get this is appreciated, I shall try to keep this up as long as the response is good. Sometimes we just have to let them go though, this one had a good base I think.

1 comment:

Dottie T Leatherwood said...

Thanks for sharing your process with this painting. I find it so interesting to watch another artist's struggles and successes. We all have them! Love getting to see the before and after and congratulations on the sale!!