Blazing Sunset

The third and last in a series of knife paintings, Blazing Sunset was a challenge because of the complexity of colors I wanted to use. The challenge came from my wish to keep the colors as pure as possible and allow some optical mixing to occur on the paper without letting them get muddy. I also wanted to create some sense of movement that is often typical of fiery sunsets as they get to their peak. Keeping the knife strokes in the sky at a diagonal enhanced the feeling of movement such as might happen in a real sunset.

Blazing Sunset, Acrylic on 300lb watercolor paper, 11"x14", $75 (unframed)

Rockface

Abstract painting allows a level of freedom that can be hard to deal with if one is coming from another, tighter style. Today’s post illustrates that well for me.

Rockface was done in two sessions. At first the underlying cooler colors (blue, violet, grey and black) were laid down in a rough manner. The idea was just to get the canvas covered. Once this was dry, the warmer (yellow, red, and orange) paints were applied thickly with different sized knives. Lightly grazing the paint-loaded knife across the previous dry layer is a perfect method to reveal unpredictable textures and shapes. While working the second layer two things happened. First, craggy shapes began to appear almost as if on their own. Second, I could feel the temptation to keep working the paint growing with each stroke! As any artist knows, the latter is the surest enemy of beautiful vibrant color. Fortunately, I was able to stop before ending up with a lot of mud on the canvas.

Rockface, Acrylic on canvas board, 18”X24”, $350 (Unframed)

Time-of-day effects in a landscape

That landscapes are subject to daily and seasonal changes provides opportunity to explore the same scene many times over. In the case of the impressionists, such exploration often spanned many years of their lives. The simplest approach I believe is to create a middle of the day study (such as Distant Coastline), then switch colors and adjust values for other times of day in subsequent pieces.

Sunset is an attempt to use the same composition as in Distant Coastline but with colors that might be more likely as the color hue and temperature changes with the waning of the day. The basic method used in Sunset is as I have previously described -- layers of gesso worked to a buttery cover for the canvas and then other colors worked into it with a knife.

Pictures like Sunset do not effectively separate the background, middle ground and foreground - except with the use of color. This can make the perspective appear a bit flat. This is less of a problem for an impressionistic work like this one but would be problematic for a more realistic style.

Sunset, Acrylic on canvas board, 8"X10" $90 (unframed)

Minimal brushstrokes painting style

An exercise I have found quite useful in developing a looser style of painting is to do a painting with the fewest strokes possible. This requires minimal working of paint on the surface leading to a freshness of color that can be easily destroyed in just a few more strokes.

In Reflections, I have used a rather common scene of trees reflected in the water to demonstrate a minimal brushstrokes approach. The palette is restricted (ultramarine blue, sap green, cadmium yellow and titanium white) and I used the biggest brush I could force myself to pick! After all, this is a small canvas and the temptation was to reach for a small brush. The bigger brush allowed for the canvas to be covered quickly and with the self-imposed limit on brushstrokes, there was no choice but to leave the paint alone after it was down on the canvas.

Reflections, Acrylic on canvas board, 5”X7” (Not for sale)