Friday 24 January 2014

New Year Cleaning


At least once a year I get into the “cleaning the old pile” mood, and get through all the old paintings and decide which ones will be burned. Yes, I burn the ones that I feel like are far too bad to be shown to anyone, although a friend of mine asked a good question: what if there is someone else out there that would love to have one of those that you burn? Well, I don’t know, but since I don’t feel happy with them anymore (yes, at some point in time I was proud of many of them – that is how learning goes on) I would be embarrassed to have them exposed in any way. Also, there are some studies I did from lessons I have followed from time to time, and which I only keep as a record of my learning steps, but I cannot give them away because the original images are copyrighted.
Of course I will not show in here any of those that I burned, but I would like to share with you some studies done back in 2011, when I followed a tutorial by Virgil R. Carter on WetCanvas about how to paint colorful buildings. I loved the tutorial and the way Virgil passed us the knowledge, and all that material is still a very good reference for me. These are some value and color contrast studies of a former woolen mill from a photo shared with us by Virgil. These little studies (all of them are about 5x7 inches) reminded me the great time I had while following the tutorial.