Painting - Holding the Brush
I was working with a student today and we were doing a painting together. She has a good eye and is good with color so her painting resembled mine except in one important way.
Her brush strokes were all swishy and going the same direction. I said to her " hey look at your strokes, they're boring".
Often this is the biggest giveaway that a painting is the work of an armature artist but it's easy to avoid.
For one don't paint like a robot, you're not a human inkjet printer, your a human being and you should paint the way you feel. Not mechanically.
Also, stop and hold that brush another way. Change it up. Don't lick at the painting with it like a kitty cleaning itself. Use every part of the brush to create strokes.
Cheers,
A bit about "Moonlit Meadow" I'm trying to do a "blue" painting here. Not sure I succeeded at my goal but I find this painting pleasant anyway. It went through a major revision although I've no photo of the original state.
It was blue also but the sky in the original was doing nothing special. This was another case of something that looked good in my reference photo but was too subtle and blah when painted.
And it was too subtle, as I'd resorted to rice grain like strokes in the sky in my effort to get the desired effect.
Also bothersome; the main bunch of trees was topped by a point, something that I found challenging visually. I was never happy with it and walked by day after day gritting my teeth a bit in displeasure.
Until one day it made it's way back onto my easel.
I'm actually fairly happy with this piece now. I redid the sky with one that had a hidden moon element that created strong light in the clouds and more contrast overall. I reconfigured the trees a bit and softened their edges. I also amped up the pink and aqua tones on the ground as well as pumping up the highlights on the stream.
"Moonlit Meadow" can be viewed live at my studio in the Quarry Arts Center in Whangarei New Zealand