Where Do I Begin?

Okay, now that I've started the blog it is time to start the actual journey to that a place I don't know, a place I've never been.

Some favorite contemporary (in the time sense of the word) artists whose books I have and whose paintings I really like are (not necessarily in any particular order):

Kevin MacPherson, Fill Your Oil Paintings With Light and Color
Mike Svob, Paint Red Hot Landscapes That Sell!
Bob Rohm, The Painterly Approach, An Artist's Guide to Seeing, Painting and Expressing
Charles Sovek, Oil Painting, Develop Your Natural Ability
Steven Quiller, Color Choices, Making Color Sense Out of Color Theory; Painter's Guide to Color; Acrylic Painting Techniques, How to Master the Medium of Our Age
Rachel Wolf, editor, The Acrylic Painter's Book of Styles and Techniques (especially the work of William Hook and Joseph Orr in this book)
Tony Couch, Tony Couch's Keys to Successful Painting (plus I've talked with him on the phone)
Tom Lynch, Tom Lynch's 100 Watercolor Workshop Lesson Charts

One approach would be to go through their books doing exercises based on that content. However, the desire is to break from previous approaches to improving my art which have not proven productive in any permanent way.

I had private lessons from a Daphne Meister in Houston from nine to twelve years of age. All my work was done from copying prints using a very traditional palette of oil paints and a very traditional manner of painting. Here I learned many "rules" such as fat over lean, paint dark thin and light heavy, perspective, color mixing, and care of my brushes. Some of which I still own.

At the age of 16 I attended a week long (at least it seemed) pastel portrait workshop with Harry Worthman (1909-1989) in Houston. Harry Worthman was primarily a portrait artist and his paintings portray images of famous individuals, such as Lyndon B. Johnson, John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, J.C. Penney, Alan Shepard, Ann Landers, and Texas governors John Connally and Price Daniel, as well as Norman Rockwell in the TMA-owned painting Norman Rockwell in His Arlington, Vermont Studio, 1946, (Tyler Museum of Art, 2003.23). Many other prominent families, primarily in Texas and Louisiana, but also throughout the Southwest, as well as in England, Mexico and Japan, commissioned Worthman portraits. I learned a great deal about portrait painting from him in that short time that has remained clear in my mind to this day.

Some of my best works have been portraits. I have done one of my father, an Assistant Fire Chief of the Edinburg Texas Volunteer Fire Department, one of a merchant from Edinburg, Texas commissioned by his family, and two of Roberto Pulido of which one was done for the charitible auction for a women's shelter in South Texas and the other was done as a gift to his dear mother and father. His mother is the sister of the elected official for whom I've worked for 26 years.

Portraits are fun but I also enjoy painting landscapes. This is where I seek the most change. One of the reasons I believe I paint landscapes is that it gives me a chance to "explore" places where I cannot travel to see myself. When one paints it is very easy to get totally absorbed in the subject of the painting as observations of color, texture, form, value and light are made. I love to dwell in peaceful wooded areas near flowing waters. This may be one reason many of my landscapes lack interest and drama. I need to think that through.

I have supplies on hand sufficient to work in oil, acrylic, gouache, pastel, and watercolor. While I am most comfortable with oils because I have used them the most, I also feel safe with them because I've got time to push the paint around. I believe I will start with acrylics in order to get out of my "safe" zone and also to give me the more rapid drying time that I would like to have to make the most of the little time each day I have after my long work day.

I am probably more illustrator than fine artist but what really is the difference? Permanence? Perhaps. Assignment? Maybe but there are commissioned works of "fine art." Many artists such as J. M. W. Turner painted to tell a story or report on a significant event.

My motivation? I love beauty. I love irony. I love interesting people, places and things with a lot of visual character. I love peaceful, tranquil, pastoral scenes. I live vicariously through my art. This is one thing that makes working from beautiful photographs that my daughter has taken (of France, California, Austin, Texas area) very difficult. I consider the photos art in and of themselves and rather than try to emulate that beauty I feel I should just frame them and enjoy them. She sees the light so much better than I.

Most of the books on painting I have most enjoyed have recommended doing value sketches (thumbnails) of your idea for a painting of a certain subject limiting the values to three and grouping intermediate values into larger shapes. I believe this is a practice I should begin with some great frequency until I begin to understand the compositional elements that make a really great painting. The goal here is to not focus on the details as much as to look for the big shapes of dominant values that can make up a dynamic composition.

Time to stop talking about it and do it. Let's see...where is my sketchbook?