Sunday, June 28, 2015

416


40 cm x 20 cm, Oil, Pleinair

In Max Slevogt's Territory


30 cm x 40 cm, Oil, Pleinair


Compared to other countries, Germany does not just have a great history in impressionistic pleinair painting. The men considered the big three were Max Liebermann (1847-1935), Lovis Corinth (1858-1925) and Max Slevogt (1868-1932). Today I painted in Slevogt's territory near Landau at the Deutsche Weinstrasse.






Max Slevogt's painting "View from Godramstein to Frankweiler", Oil (1913)


My painting location was about one a kilometer behind that poplar in the Slegvogt painting and I was looking to the left, towards Birkweiler.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

On Calm Water


50 cm x 30 cm, Oil, Pleinair

Water keeps attracting me. To improve, I should better paint something else to be able to observe color more carefully. Due to the wind calm water changes its colors much faster than anything else. It just keeps attracting me.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Rosenhugel


30 cm x 40 cm, Oil, Pleinair

At watercolor painting the paper is taped onto a solid support and I read quite often that the greatest moment is the when the tape is removed because the resulting clean edges give it an neat finished look. I thought why not trying the same with oils and covered the edges. 
I do like the effect. The thick textures of the oil paint come out nicely surrounded by the empty canvas. Don't like the white though and will apply an imprimatura before taping next time.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Monday, June 22, 2015

Face of Pity


50 cm x 40 cm, Oil

After plenty of pleinair work recently I went for a face today, mainly to improve drawing accuracy. Faces are excellent for that purpose because minor misplacements cause funny results... Oh boy, can't find it funny at all right now. What a pityful effort today!


Sunday, June 21, 2015

Day at a Creek


"Stump", 40 cm x 30 cm, Oil, Pleinair





"Branch", 25 cm x 30 cm, Oil, Pleinair

Friday, June 19, 2015

Of What's Left


30 cm x 30 cm, Oil, Pleinair

Not much left in our region. Almost everything looks the same. Oceans of corn and vinyards. Where there is grass it is cut, where there is water it is straightened. And on the weekends people work in their gardens to make it look the same in small.

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Color Harmony Training - Green Side


25 cm x 30 cm, Oil

I had never really understood what color harmony even meant until I started doing blockstudies in context of the painting program of the Virtual Art Academy. My idea was more like which colors go together well when choosing clothes. That is just a matter of taste and ever changing fashion. Color harmony is not. Our brains use color to identify the shape of objects to generate a feeling of space. A threedimensional object in space is seen with with different colors from the different sides of the object depending on the direction of the illuminating light. We do not see the actual color of a cube but three shapes of different color. Using these three colors our brain can identify the actual color of a cube (although these three colors are often very different in value, hue, and saturation) because they are harmonized by the illuminating light. To create a realistic illusion in a painting it is crucial to get the colors right. Our brains only have a very small tolerance until things start to look wrong/unharmonic. The more one works on color observation skills the narrower this tolerance becomes. So if you don't want to reduce the number of paintings you like in a museum/gallery/exhibition to just a few, better do not work on these skills. 
Like in music, unharmonic tones can be extra fantastic within a piece of art that feels flawless. I think to create this feel takes many years of hard work in any kind of art and plenty more of these studies for me.

Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Parkinsel View


30 cm x 40 cm, Oil, Pleinair

No serious clouds today. So i decided to shoot myself in the back, by misjudging sun movement (she does move!). When i started the bridge was the brightest feature of the scene and i decided to make it pop out more using a rather low key for the painting (darker painting overall). Fairly soon my side of the bridge fell out of sun and i had to start over again. At that point i wouldn't have believed that this could be one of my best paintings, which per definition is a sold one ;-)

Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Jetty


25 cm x 30 cm, Oil, Pleinair

The conditions keep being awkward, lots of clouds with sunny spells. I picked the sunny conditions here and painted from memory under the clouds... Definitely not the best strategy, neither to get good results and nor to improve the painter but better still than watching tv.

I have started to post frequently on facebook. Think it's a better place to communicate. If you like to connect... Me on Facebook ... Looking forward to see you there, too!

Monday, June 15, 2015

Spires for Instance


35 cm x 40 cm, Oil, Pleinair

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Lack of Mind and Fortune


20 cm x 40 cm, Oil, Pleinair

What a beautiful day! The sun was shining and I was in the middle of an amazing scene, a ceremony of sparkling colors. I was pretty happy until the moment I discovered that I had forgotten to bring the white tube of paint... I drove back home in a rush, less happy already.  
Back at the scene an hour later the cloud coverage was less than 5% still. The only overcast  area in my region was the one i had decided to paint.



Saturday, June 13, 2015

Friday, June 12, 2015

Café Maximilianstrasse


30 cm x 30 cm, Oil, Pleinair/Studio

Thursday, June 11, 2015

At the Speyerisch Harbor


Dome, 30 cm x 40 cm, Oil, Pleinair




Rhine, 35 cm x 40 cm, Oil, Pleinair

Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Monday, June 8, 2015

Purple Pond


20 cm x 40 cm, Oil, Pleinair

Blossom Study


30 cm x 25 cm, Oil, Pleinair

Wetterau Study


20 cm x 40 cm, Oil, Pleinair

Friday, June 5, 2015

Cold Color in the Heat


30 cm x 30 cm, Oil, Plein Air

Wednesday, June 3, 2015

Tomorrow Ever Knows


25 cm x 30 cm, Oil, Plein Air