Leroy's Art Blog

Two months since my last posting?  Well, I've been in China for most of that time, and I have done quite a bit of new painting there.  Also, I learned a lot more about contemporary Chinese painting, and I expect to write about that and give some talks on it before too long.  But I have more organization to do to organize, write, and edit before I pontificate.

So I'll digress for a moment, to share some painting I've done quite recently, since my return to Philadelphia.  I attended a delightful two-workshop Speed Painting program offered by Nancy Bea Miller at the Main Line Art Center.  Nancy set up little scenes (still lives, really) of one or a few objects, and then had us paint them, with a one-hour time limit.  It was a great exercise in that it forced me to use bigger brushes than usual, and immediately concentrate on blocking-in the larger color areas.  Most importantly, it requires that you work quickly to not dwell on the details.  So here are the results of the program - better results than I'd have expected for paintings done against a time clock:

It was easy to get the shapes, but fun to work out the differing texture of "lemon" and "corks:"		(8x10")

Pomegranates were common enough in China, but I didn't paint them there.  (6x8")  This one has ended up as a Christmas gift to my sister Arlene

I haven't often tried painting shiny, mechanical surfaces, but both these were fun to work on. ( 8x10"}  This one also ended up as a gift to a sister of mine, to Allegra.

The cork was an attempt to really loosen up and let the edges smudge into the greater murk surrounding it.  (6x8")

The vegetables were tricky: that is supposed to be a broccoli on the top, there.  (8x6")

Of course an orange is a classic painting subject, along with apples.  (6x8")

 The idea of these things is to think of them as STUDIES.  A quick way to try out stuff, and maybe provide a basis for a longer, more careful painting.  This way they don't have to be beautiful, or even successful, although some of them may (hopefully) turn out to be rewarding and pleasing in themselves.  Nancy claims that if you do one of these every day for a month, it will definitely push your painting forward, and improve your technique.  A lot of people do this, and there are passels of web sites dedicated to people doing a painting a day.

 I would like to keep doing studies this way - frequently at least, if not daily.  Probably not daily.  The first one I've done since the workshops is a honeydew melon, sliced.  Lord, just drawing that series of ellipses inside a circle was quite a challenge.  I think I will keep coming back to this "study" again and again:

The gradations of green in the melon are really subtle, and great to explore.  (6x8')