Video Art Magazine

Video Art Magazine
This site has wonderful demos and stories about today's master artists.

I'm still working on learning web building software, so even though I want to paint today, I have to get this web learning curve behind me.

There is a free video on the APVM site, and it's almost 2 hours long.  You can skip through it and there are 4 or 5 segments.  A surprise for me was one on Michael Klein's watercolor technique which is an oil painting approach to watercolor.

Happy Spring!

Best Art and Art Website Links

Great resource page, Business & Marketing Of Art – with Leah Markham

This site rivals the ever so popular blog page of.Stapleton Kearns.

Stapleton's is about art and Leah's is about marketing.

So today, I'm concentrating on my art web page redesign which is smaller than that other site I'm working on, and easier I hope, and with a snow storm blowing outside, it's just the right atmosphere for working on the computer.  OK, maybe I'll have to take a break to read an art mag in the comfort of my cozy bed.  Paint?  Nope, not today.

Share my pain-website trouble

Well, it's not the art site, but I've been working for days on a web site using a software called WebPlusX4 and first thing this morning I lost the whole thing, yes I saved it many times, but the page that comes up is practically blank.  It's taken me all day to get over it.  Well, now I will start all over again and try to save it more ways than one.  I guess I'll be pretty good at it by the time I do another one, then, hopefully, there won't be any more surprises like this. 
The good thing about all this is that I was in a very happy place while I was involved with the production of this site, feeling good about learning things, and making good progress.  I hope all that optimism and satisfaction returns for the second time around.

The Piggy

I bought this pig a long time ago and just never got around to painting it.  I enjoyed doing this little painting, its rough really, just a sketch, but now I know that it is fun to paint it and I'll do another one.  I did it today during the class with my art student and the lesson was about using fewer strokes.  Neither one of us could remember to count our strokes, but it helps to do this to slow down and put the stroke where it belongs as well as loading the brush and putting down the paint.
The student's subject was the vase of flowers--these photos are my paintings of it after she left.  I wanted to go over the lesson with her subject to "see it from her perspective" more or less.  I'm using alkyd oil paints which dry faster than regular oil paints but they don't seem to have the same intensity as regular oils.  I guess I was in a painting mood today. 
I've been struggling with portraits for so long now that a quick still life was a joy.
The student who didn't think she would be able to paint flowers, did a very good job.  She is trying to learn to slow down and lay on the paint--just see the shapes and values.

Zorn research

Link to Anders Zorn website, complete works and bio.

Here is a marvelous link to Zorn with a biography and slide show of 144 of his works!

While not well known here in US he was a rock star in Europe at the end of the 1800s.

I'm revved-black for blue

Spending the day watching Zorn videos, holy cow, there are so many wonderful ones I didn't know about.  Anyway, I found this link about his palette that interests me a lot.  I can't wait to give it a try.  It's primarily one yellow, one red (Robert Lewis uses Aliz, ltblank commented that Zorn used genuine Vermillian), white and black and the range of colors is amazing.  The Zorn Palette Video

His Left Ear

Solving problems with a portrait of George.  After finally figuring out that his head was not wide enough, and realizing that it needed to be wider on only one side, it was sad to have to block out his left ear and start over AND it was the only part of the portrait that I liked so far.  Here is the portrait of his (now painted over) left ear taken in warm and cool light.  Notice  how different it looks depending on what light is on.  The cool light is the overhead studio light and the other is normal lighting.

I also finally (I hope) figured out how to get the palette I want to use for portraits.  The old KISS principle, three primary colors.  I've done a lot of research looking for a palette that would work for me, and by that I mean, make sense to me.  Perhaps I'll branch out after using this for a while, but for now, I like it.  I mixed up a kind of mother color and from there mixed a cool and warm version with steps from light to dark, etc. keeping the cool colors on my palette to the left where the cool colors are to the left on the portrait itself, and the warm on the right, etc.  This way I don't cross my warms and cools.