The Mississippi Queen riverboat used to cruise the Ohio River and dock at Madison, Indiana. The passengers would disembark and spend a few hours touring this historic town. This is my rendition of the boat.
Some things to notice: The areas in shadow on the side of the boat are painted a bluish shade. Look at the top at smokestacks and other areas. Where the sunlight hits it is painted white, even with a tiny touch of yellow but the shadow side is blue. Notice how it works. Also look at the reflections under the boat. This makes the water “wet.”
The placement of the boat over the bottom edge of the hills gives the impression of distance.
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I wasn’t going to put this painting on my blog, but my cousin Terri encouraged me to. It is a painting based on my vacation at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina earlier this year. I didn’t feel like it wasn’t up to my quality. It was accepted into a show recently when I submitted it as a fluke.
You will see I used atmospheric perspective. The closer persons are painted larger, while those further away are smaller. The closer ones are more clearly portrayed and those in the distance are less defined and the colors ared faded.
Maybe you will like it better than I thought. Who knows? If not, I’ll put something else up very soon.
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I love doing portraits. I finished this one last night and delivered it this morning. The subject is a woman who died two weeks ago.
You’ll see my technique — I first look for shapes of values or colors and draw them in. Next I fill in the darkest values, then I do the lightest ones. Finally I fill in the medium values. The shadows around her eyes, the area under her nose and bottom lip and chin are the darkest. Note the area above her eyebrow, along her cheek and the edge of the nose. This is where the lightest values are. The rest of the face is medium. This technique gives the face volume. It doesn’t appear flat on the canvas.
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This painting is from my advanced figure painting class when I was a student at the University of Utah. The model was in a low-light setting. You will notice that only the essentials are portrayed — the eyes, nose and mouth. She is basically silhouetted. The eyes are in a shadow, so only the eyelid is shown. Note the highlights on the eyelid, the nose and chin. The back wall is painted light, giving contrast to the figure. The top part of her body is lighted, but the other is in shadow. The shadow is one dark shape.
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I’m paddling with my daughter and her two children. My grandson, Jacob, is enthralled by the water. He leans over to drag his hand through it. My daughter, Sarah, grabs his pants to keep him from falling in.
Some might say this painting is too impressionistic. I disagree. To me, painting is like singing while photography is spoken. This event was a musical moment and was expressed that way.
Note the mirror images below the canoe with lines going through them to give the impression of water. The reflections of trees on the shore are expressed by streaks of yellow, green, blue and orange. The sky is reflected in the bottom left corner.
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