Day 6 - Wind

Wind, Acrylic on Crescent Board, 10"x10", $100

Day 6 of the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge

I was feeling pretty stuck today. In the end I decided to use yesterday's painting as a starting point to see where I could go next. In this one, I was interested in the idea of falling leaves and that led me to contemplate how I would depict wind. I think I got some of that here although the effect would have been better without the rightmost tree. Nevertheless, I like the "breezy" feel of this painting.

Note:  To purchase this painting, please click here. You will be transported to my website where you can make your purchase.

Day 5 - Autumn

Autumn, Acrylic on Crescent Board, 10"x10", $150

Day 5 of the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge

I am discovering that I did not put sufficient constraints on my theme for this challenge.  I am already struggling to come up with a subject each day - live and learn. Today's painting is my response to the beautiful autumn foliage we get to experience here in New England.  No, the trees have not changed yet - thank goodness! I used the following description to define my subject.

Autumn Foliage  

When I think of the glory of autumn foliage, I usually think of a gray day when most of the trees are already bare and a single remaining tree sports a shawl of orange-red. There is something about the misty grayness of a rainy fall day to make the foliage pop with an electric intensity that is completely absent on sunny days. On those rainy days, the bark of the tree is black or nearly so, providing an amazing framework for the orange and red display.

Thank You to All Who Have Commented

I want to thank everyone who has visited and commented so far. I appreciate your thoughts and your support. I know I am not the only one trying and frequently failing to learn and improve in my art, but it's amazing what a difference hearing that makes when I'm in the middle of it. Thank you for your support and for sharing your experiences!  

To Buy This Painting

If you would like to buy this painting, please click here. You will find yourself on my website where you can make your purchase. Please note that I am offering Challenge paintings at a discount for the duration of the Challenge.

Day 4 - Low Tide

Low Tide, Acrylic on Crescent Board, 10"x20", $200

Day 4 of the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge

This painting of the Maine coast at low tide turned out to be pretty interesting. In fact it is far more moody than I had planned. I am posting the description I started with below. Some parts I got; others, not so much.  It looks like my ability to focus left town with the rest of me this summer.

I am enjoying the abstraction process even though I think my progress is kind of patchy. By giving up some of the representational aspects of a subject, I seem to tap into a more emotional response to it. I think that is a good thing.  

The Maine Coast

The sky is blue with puffy white clouds. The islands make a ragged silhouette along the horizon with some additional outcroppings closer to shore. The water is blue with bands that are lighter and darker showing the currents and the varying depths. Every now and then you see a colored lobster buoy or boat mooring.  A light wind ruffles the water here and there.

Note:  To purchase this painting, please click here. You will be transported to my website where you can make your purchase.

Day 3 - Doorway

Doorway, Acrylic on Crescent Board, 12"x10", $100

Day 3 of the Thirty Paintings in 30 Days Challenge

OK. I'm not even going to pretend that I planned this. I started out with the goal of making a more minimalist, more abstract apple than yesterday's.  To that end, I put on an orange underpainting. Then I painted an apple drawing and put in the shadows - my structure, if you will.  Once those layers were dry, I started painting with a fairly large brush making interesting patterns and putting in the areas that I wanted to make light. This is what emerged. When I saw what was happening, I decided to go with it and it evolved into what, to me, looks like a doorway.

I don't know if this painting will stay like this after the challenge is over or whether I will decide that it really isn't all that strong.  I have learned that once in a while it pays to listen to what a painting is saying and wait to see if it makes sense.  For someone as methodical as me, that was a really hard lesson to learn, but it has resulted in some surprising and interesting paintings. So for now, this painting is done.

Note: If you would like to buy this painting, please click here. You will find yourself on the September 2015 30 Day Challenge page of my website where you can make your purchase. Please note that Challenge paintings will be at a reduced price for the duration of the 30 Day Challenge.

Day 2 - Apple

Apple, Acrylic on Crescent Board, 10"x10", $100

Day 2 of the 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge

Today's painting is an apple. Apples are so basic that almost anyone can recognize one with the barest amount of visual information.  I like this painting although I think I put in too much of the apple. I will likely try this again with the goal of showing less while still getting the idea of "apple" across.

Apple 

An apple is one of those objects that we learn to recognize from early youth; they are sort of inscribed on our brains so we recognize them with very little information.  I think an apple should be red (I know there are lots of different kinds with lots of different colors); it should be roundish, bigger at the shoulders; and it should have that indentation where the stem is attached.  If I see those things, my mind says, “apple.”

Note:  To buy this painting, please click here. You will find yourself on the September 2015 Thirty Day Challenge page on my website where you can make your purchase. Challenge paintings will be specially priced until the end of the Challenge - at that time, I will make any changes and tweaks that I think are needed and add them to my normal inventory.

 

Day 1 - Sunflower

Sunflower, Acrylic on Crescent Board, 20"x10", NFS

Day 1 of the 30 paintings in 30 Days Challenge!

I was going to start with that simplest of all forms, the apple. But when I got ready to paint I decided to go for a sunflower instead.  Since I have been playing hookey pretty much all summer, this painting is a little rough. I'm sure that as I get back into the habit of painting daily, my skills will return. Meanwhile, there are certainly a lot of elements in this painting that I like - particularly in the greens (leaf) and the stem area.

As part of this challenge (I have named my upcoming series "Getting to the Essence of a Thing"), I am posting the description I used to define the painting. Please see my previous post (Aug. 26) for a description of my theme for this Challenge.

Sunflowers

There are many forms and colors of sunflowers, but to me a sunflower should be yellow – the color of the sun - (although I do have red ones and orange ones and bi-color ones in my garden, too) and it should have a big brown center.  It is tall and has great big, dusty green leaves. When I see those characteristics the first thing that comes to mind is sunflower.

Note:  This painting is not for sale. I have many others to choose from. If interested, please click here to visit my website.

Getting to the Essence of a Thing

Portrait of a Tree - Autumn, Acrylic on Watercolor Paper, 6"x6", SOLD

September 2015 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge!

Good news! Another 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge begins on September 1 - that's next week. I will be participating and hope you will follow me on my adventure. I will be continuing my exploration of the intersection between abstraction and the representational.  I will also be exploring the idea of painting or capturing the essence or heart of a subject. To get at that, I plan to use a methodology that has worked for me before (although on a one-off basis) and try to expand it to work for a broader range of subjects and also to practice it sufficiently to be able to call on it when creating future paintings.I call it "Getting to the Essence of a Thing".

Getting to the Essence of a Thing:
I have always been a verbal person - describing something in words allows me to see it in my mind's eye. This methodology uses that predilection to help me focus on the essential and discard the superfluous. It works as follows:

• For each painting, I choose a subject. 
• Then I write down what I think defines the essence of that subject - what is needed to define or describe that subject, stripped down to the basics. 
• That is what I paint, using a combination of abstract and representational elements. The idea is that what doesn't actively contribute to a painting, detracts from it.  

For the month of September, I will use this approach for each of my paintings, posting both the description and the painting each day. I will also be adding them to the gallery at Leslie Saeta's Slices of Life blog as part of the September 2015 30 Paintings in 30 Days Challenge.


"Portrait of a Tree - Autumn": 
To give you an idea of what "Getting to the Essence" entails, let me describe the painting above.  It is called "Portrait of a Tree-Autumn."  Before I started painting, I wrote a description of what I thought would be needed to define a tree in autumn.  Thus:

• A tree needs to have a trunk. We would not necessarily recognize that something is a tree unless it has a trunk to support it.
• A tree needs to be planted in the ground; they are rooted in the earth.
• A tree has branches - maybe one, maybe more - although a young tree could be without branches.
• A tree in autumn (I live in New England) needs some colored leaves.  

And that is what I painted. I used acrylic paint on watercolor paper; I used fracturing and a palette knife to create the branches and textures.

Barn #5-Barn Door:
The following painting is another example of this approach although it is entirely abstract.

Barn #5 - Barn Door, Acrylic on Crescent Board, 10"x10", NFS

For this painting, the description is as follows (I used old, New England barns as my jumping off point):

• An old barn has a siding of rough boards that can be weathered gray or have varying amounts of red paint on them.
• An old barn is frequently missing it's window panes; the windows and doors are empty, black, openings through which you can occasionally see a hint of some old object or another.
• An old barn's paint is frequently peeling or patchy.
• Barns come in all shapes and sizes, so there is no one shape to make the barn. 

In the painting, I used a palette knife to create a close up of the flaking, peeling, patchy siding and avoided defining the building's shape by making the painting an all-over close-up of part of one side of the barn. I included abstracted window and door openings, hinting at things inside that cannot be adequately seen or described.

Buying the Challenge Paintings:
Some will be for sale, some won't be. For those that are for sale, the prices will basically be a 30 Day Challenge Special - once the Challenge is over, I touch them up, put them in frames, and prepare them for life in a gallery, with prices to match.