The Girl with the Pearl Earring - De Young Museum

The Girl with the Pearl Earring has come to San Francisco, and I got to see her at the De Young Museum! Going to museums and seeing works by great artists always has a renewing effect on me!

According to the signs on the wall, this painting is not a portrait of an actual person, but instead is a tronie. In other words, the artist was trying to capture a facial expression or historic character, but not the likeness of an actual person. (Wow, how disappointing for those of us who saw the movie, Girl with a Pearl Earring, starring Scarlett Johansson!)

Works by other Dutch artists of the same time period were also part of the exhibit. One thing that immediately stood out was the simplicity of this work. Many of the works by other artists were so highly detailed, it looked like the artists used a 3-hair brush, and maybe a magnifying glass. That was the predominant style of the day. While The Girl with the Pearl Earring was painted very simply, with wide brushes, few strokes and minimal detail. The pearl itself was painted with three brush strokes! The earring probably was not a real pearl, but a glass bead painted to look like a pearl.  

The Girl is the only painting by Vermeer in the show. She looks like she has just turned her head and is about to speak to us. There is a feeling of life and movement in the painting, and her gaze seems directed toward something to the right of us, which makes it even more mysterious.

The painting itself appeared much lighter than the picture above, and the skin tones looked somewhat chalky. The lights and shadows were both painted with cool colors. This gave the painting a modernist look. I wondered if the recent cleaning and removal of yellowed varnish might have changed it. But, I'm glad to have had the opportunity to see it!

Spring Greens

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Here is my plein air painting from last Sunday. Okay, I know it isn't spring yet, but this is what the grass looked like! The yellow in the distance is wild mustard.

Here is is, about halfway complete. As you can see I was in the shade and behind a fence. I added the sky color to the background hills, because really, it's all about painting the air, and the further away something is, the more air there is between you.

Hope spring comes soon for you too!

Painting in Suisun

Suisun Sparkles - 8x10" - oil

Yesterday, I painted in Suisun with "DaGroup," a local painting group. This is the tidal marsh at the edge of the city. Tidal marshes are difficult because not only is the light changing, but because the patterns of the grasses and water change as the tide rises or falls. I totally love sparkles on water, and there were lots of sparkles in this scene! And we had nice weather (unlike last week, when it was so cold.)

I hope you are having good weather and can get out and paint!

Photographing large paintings

Photoflood light with polarizing filter

Yesterday I took pictures of some larger paintings. It is always a challenge to get good pictures of oil paintings because of the shine and texture of the surface. Smaller paintings can usually be photographed in the shade or in a lightbox. But, if you want a really good professional quality image, it is necessary to use a polarizing filter on the camera lens, and on the lights! Here is one of the lights with the filter gel clipped in front of it. Looks crude, but it works! The filter is just a sheet of plastic that will melt if it gets too close to the heat of the light bulb. Now I have some good images for juried shows!

Have a good new year!

El Cerrito Art Show

Evensong - 6 x 12" - oil on canvas  SOLD

This past weekend, I had entered three paintings in the El Cerrito Art Association all media show. I am happy to report that I received a First Place award in the oil painting category! And my painting, Evensong, sold! Unfortunately, I don't have a good photograph of the first place winning painting, but will put one up later.

The show was very well organized, and well attended, and there were lots of sales. A fun event!

Painting in the Middle of Nowhere

This morning, I went out plein air painting with two artist friends. Robert had suggested we go to Skaggs Island. When I couldn't find it on Google Maps, I asked him where it was, and he said, "Out in the middle of nowhere." Well, he was right! There was not a house to be seen (and we could see for miles). It was so off the beaten path, that we set-up our painting stuff right on the road, on a bridge, no less! Here was my easel. Only two cars went by while we were there, and they got around us pretty easily!

I though you might like to see more of this place:

There were tracks of wildlife in the mud. Red tailed hawks and snowy egrets were flying over. It was great!

Decisions, Decisions...

"When you get scared, go for the clothes!" -- Joy Thomas

I have been working on a portrait, the first oil portrait I've done in years. Wow, it is so easy to get rusty, and forget things; like which colors to mix so the skin won't look chalky. So... taking a break from the struggle to get the skin tones right, I went for the shirt. Here's where it is so far. I looked at it and realized this is the kind of unfinished look many contemporary artists use in their portraits. Here's an example. Should I leave the shirt loose and unfinished looking? Another decision!

By the way, you may have noticed that I haven't posted in awhile. Well, Blogger would not take my photo uploads. Today, I told myself I would do a blog no matter what! I cleared the cache, the cookies, disabled the popup blocker, and a bunch of plug-ins, all to no avail... Finally, I downloaded the Chrome browser, and it worked! (I had been using Firefox.) It feels so good to be back online again!

Hope you had a good weekend!