I thought I would share some of my newer paintings. This one is titled, "Family Outing". I had a lot of fun doing it. I learned a lot about how to paint water and ripples. It went so well that I added a fish to the water to increase the number of animals. The idea for this painting just popped into my head one day when I was taking a break to think about the "Elk in the Gold" painting I was working on at the time. I found it to be quite enjoyable getting in and painting with my smallest liner brush all the feathers of the geese.
I was told by an art critic that I noodle my paintings too much. My understanding of noodling is that you go in and paint too many little lines or bits of color. He said my work just isn't painterly enough with too many hard jumps from one color to the next. But this has go me thinking. What if instead of trying to move away from noodling to going towards it and noodling more, even over the top. So that is what I'm trying to do now. Here is my first example of this.
I really got in there and painted each line of fur. I love how this painting turned out too, although it was quite a fight. I wasn't having fun with it until the last 20% of it. I didn't think it was going to turn out. Plus I gave up on the painting twice, but in the end pushed through and finished it. Which was good because some collectors of mine saw it and loved it. They just had to have it so they bought it.
The next step is to do a larger painting using what I learned with this one. I also learned that striking contrast is far more visually exciting. It may not see like much to anyone else but for me this contrast made me very uncomfortable, which I'm learning is a great thing.
Well the next one is off and going. I'll get a shot of it in progress tomorrow. I also did some new pre-drawing things too.
