Trip to New York City

Yesterday Heather and I took a trip to New York City.
First we went to the Bernarducci Meisel Gallery on 57th Street to see and exhibition of Photorealist paintings.  Then we went to the Armory to see the Print exhibition. Next to Candle Cafe for lunch and then to the Met where we saw the Vermeer [...]

continuation of Vermeer study – 3

Rey demonstrated some painting techniques on this painting today in class, and I worked on it some more as well. Here are some general pointers he gave me and my interpretations of what he said mixed together:
Work on color mixing and brush strokes. Work from the lighter areas into the darker areas. Put the color [...]

Continuation of Vermeer watercolor study

I continued with the study of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring the past few days.

It is interesting how the cartoon-like look of the painting from a day or two ago has faded as I applied more detail. The main thing I’ve learned with this is that when you are painting a big area that [...]

Watercolor study of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring – work in progress

This watercolor study is half size of the original. It is on 140 cold press. Once it is done I am going to a full scale study of the face on cold press. Then I plan on a full scale painting on hot press 140lb.
Perhaps the most interesting thing that happened in the last week [...]

Studies for a painting I want to do one day

This is a little study of part of a painting I want to do. This is a small part of the painting. It is looking in a window of a restaurant where some people are having lunch.
Below the people is a plaid curtain which is beyond my capabilities at this time. I did a few [...]

More Studies of “Big” Discovery

Here is a series of studies I did after my ‘big’ discovery (read this post for info).
I picked this area of the Main Street in Northampton to work on. Here is the original – just a few inches by a few inches.
I decided to focus on the little ornamental tree outside the store and came [...]

A “Big” Discovery

Late in August I had one of those little moments of discovery which I call a ‘big’ discovery since it had to do with scale of paintings, and in particular the paintings of the photorealists. Many photorealist paintings are large scale, often well over 7 feet in length. They are enlarging a small photo to [...]

Empire State Building Watercolor

This is a picture from August of the watercolor painting of the Empire State Building. I didn’t document too much of the progress of it other than the previous posts on the windows. I don’t recall too much of the process after that. I touched up a few things and will get a picture of [...]

Resolution of Windows on Empire State Building Watercolor

I’m back to blogging after taking the summer off (from blogging – not art). I will hopefully get caught up with everything I did over the summer in the following series of posts, though it might take a few days.
I was having trouble with the windows on some buildings in the Empire State Building painting [...]

Trouble with Windows on Empire State Building watercolor

ABOVE: This is how the windows came out in the initial study I did for the Empire State Building painting I am working on. These buildings are medium depth between some close up street signals and the far away Empire State Building. In my photo there are a lot of reflections and details including black [...]