All about Still Life

My last post was about getting back outside to paint, but I would like to make a few post about still life while it is fresh in my head. The painting above was done in the middle of what I would call my still life season. From the end of  November until the beginning of March I spent most of my painting time working in still life.

Perhaps it was the desire to work from life that got me on such a kick to paint still life or maybe too few field sketches and reference photos. Regardless, still life was the focus of the past few months and now my appreciation for artist that do good work in still life is great. I regularly follow quite a few artist that work in the subject to see what they have to say. A thing of interest for me is to see how an artist works out composition with their still life. I've seen artist that use one angle and concept to do all their work, while others will use a different angle and experiment with new (to them) concepts all the time. Here are a few of the artist that I am watching. http://www.qiang-huang.blogspot.com/, http://carolmarine.blogspot.com/, http://lisadaria.blogspot.com/. These are all artist on DailyPainters. If you follows blogs and daily painters, chances are you know who carol marine and qiang-huang are.  Lisa Daria is some one that I just noticed a couple months ago, but she has been painting much longer than that. I'm a huge fan of their still life paintings and every time they post something it is worth checking out just to do some analyzing and see what they are thinking about.

The painting above was done back in January. At the time I was looking at distorting edges. The knife in the painting has a lot of hard and crisp edges while the apple is softer and almost ethereal in appearance as it recedes into the background.

Time to get back outside

Welcome back! It has been a while since my last post.  This time of year is exciting for plein-air painters. The chance to get back out in the field without worry of losing grip of the brush and feet freezing to the ground. The last part is an exaggeration, but it certainly feels that way when its freezing outside and your wearing heavy boots. This was my second attempt at painting outside a few weeks back. There have been a few warm streaks so far this year and I made sure to take advantage of them. Now it looks like there will be a longer warm streak. I've been boxing up my still life objects and filling out all the paper work for paint outs. I will be posting regularly again now that I can get outside to paint. Also I was painting almost exclusively in oil during the winter months. Yesterday though was a day of re-arranging my pastel palette. Once I get outside the pastels will be good to have out again.

Getting Old

Tonight I decided to post this painting up. It is up on my website but I didn't post it up here because at the time of painting it I thought not many people would like it. After sitting on it for a while I've grown to love this painting. I'm going to enter it in a show whenever they come up again. My pictures are not of the best quality. The colors are not the same but they are sort of close. They just don't capture the full depth of the color. It is just a hard thing to explain in words but in real life the paintings just pops. This paintings breaks a guide line that I hear very often from others. Don't paint an object up to the edge! Honestly I think that is one of the things that makes this painting special  to me is lack of caring about guide lines and painting what seemed interesting to me at the time.  A person might look at this and say "hey that's just a tape dispenser" but if you think about it, a tape dispenser is interesting. Look past the aesthetics of the thing and see it, learn its history, see its purpose, and its personal influence on what you've done in your daily life. Tape dispensers are interesting in their own right. I like it, I think others will to if they look at it long enough.

New Website

Tonight I started a new website using FASO. The link to the site is http://royboswell.fineartstudioonline.com/. If you check the site on a regular basis I apologize. Everyday I will do my best to post new stuff on the FASO account. I will do my best to include as much information to those pages and figure out set up for pay pal for those asking for it. It is strange having readers from 10 different countries read my blog, when I can only speak and write in one language. If you like my work check out the FASO account. This painting above is titled, The edge of the field is beautiful. It is 12"x24". This view is from the roundabout from the grain bens of my grandparents farm. It is a place where I spent a lot of time during the fall and winter months as a child. Keep your eyes open on the website. I will be entering contest every month and if you like it along with everyone else on the website it will put me in the top 15%. I hope you enjoy.

Roy

Great things and bad problems

The great things that have been going on more than make up for the little bit of problems that have accrued. My computer was in bad shape last week and I finally got it back to normal. The thing that bothered me most was it being during a week when most people would be home with time to play around on the internet. Regardless of that I'm back now and I've been producing like a wild man. This is my first of today. I'm fairly certain I've done more still life with these little birds in the past two weeks than some artist do in an entire year. I've been trying to get my palette down to as few as colors as possible and this one is at four colors. I'm not sure if I can go one less without it looking like a value study. Although tomorrow I will do my best to do that. One of the things I've been working on is making colors appear that are not on the palette. If you think there is blue in this painting you would be wrong. Anyway this painting is called "The illusions of winning arguments". I'm currently in the process with another artist to start a still life group in the area so many more still life will be coming during these cold months.

It confuses me

For the past couple of weeks I have been spending a lot of time with oils, over pastel and watercolor. I've been trying to improve my ability to paint nature in plein air, using photos, and sketches. So far it has been hit or miss. Occasionally I will have good days but most are mild or bad. That being said if I set up a simple still life I come away happy with the painting almost every time. I was having a hard time painting today. After three paintings of 2 rough and 1 decent paintings of natural scenes, I turned the light on this little pot and painted it on a 5x7 panel. While it is a little rough I'm happy with this for the time put in. If I can get this quick and decent with my nature scenes before the year is out I would be over joyed. At this point I'm not sure what the problem is. I think some self analysing is necessary to figure out what is stopping me from becoming more consistent, quick and better with my nature scenes. One thing is for certain, I do enjoy painting still life more every time.

Out with the old

 I have been very busy with painting and finding room to accommodate everything. Starting freshman year a corner of every room I've been in has had large paper format boxes with rolled up landscape drawings in them. It has been one of the few things that has always been off limits when making room. It was after going through some of my old sketch books from college that I realized that it was over. I will not be pursuing the title Landscape Architect to put on a business card. (you have to work under some one who is licensed and take test to show you can take test) It is something that I feel good to shed. Perhaps one day my art will lead me to designing gardens and estates as something I do for fun. If that is the case I will happily be a no titled guy doing some design work.

Another thing I would like to mention about the top picture is look at the lighting. The light in this room makes me feel like I'm under water sometimes. If I turn on the ceiling fan it gets even better.

 The design above was for a park with a facility for Purdue's rowing crew. The large L shape with lines running through it was supposed to be a large set of steps that went down to the waters edge. The ramps were so everyone could have access and you didn't have to break some bones falling down all the steps to get to the water. To the left of the building was an outdoor amphitheater that had rock walls that ran parallel with the topography up to the top of the park. They were positioned so none of the trees lining the back of the rock walls impeded the view of the stage. The whole park area  was left open because it was a huge flood plain on the Wabash river. I just played with the contours so it would be open for people to do whatever they wanted on the rolling hills. Also when it flooded there would have been a couple really good spots to view the river from at the left end of the park. I had the main walk sitting above the flood plain lined with trees that gave neat views down to the water.