Painting from above

Thursday July 31, 2008

I did a bit of a hike yesterday so that I could paint a landscape from above. I was inspired to try something a bit more panoramic than usual, after seeing the show of Antonio Lopez Garcia paintings at the Boston Museum last week. His paintings that I was most interested in were views of Madrid from a hilltop, or the roof of a building. The paintings were massive, and would include a really wide view of the city. There’s much more detail in the paintings than anythign I would want to do, but there was also some interesting brushwork and color work. My hunch from studying the paintings is that he uses a very tight palette… I’m guessing just one yellow, one red, one blue and white. And even with that contained of a palette, he is very careful to control his tonal range. There’s very little bright white, and very little dark black. Most of the painting is moving arond in the middle grey tones with small changes in the temperature of the colors. It’s really amazing to see how much he gets out of what appears to be a very limited palette. (I could be all wrong about these colors, but it sure seemed likely.)

Besides painting, I’m doing a little running around to galleries, and I’m gettin together soem ideas for my upcoming workshop. It’s right around the corner, and I have to make sure I’ve got a good set of supplies, along with organized ideas of what to focus on and in what order. I’ve got things fairly laid out, so now I’m just sort of adding here and there and fine tuning. I’m looking forward to meeting the people who are choosing to come along and getting to know them.

Shallow Water 20 X 24”

“A picture is something that requires as much trickery, malice, and vice as the perpetration of crime, so create falsity and add a touch from nature.”

Edgar Degas

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