Where the Masses Meet is Where the Color Sleeps!

This week has been pretty crazy weather wise, we have had short sleeve shirt (in the sun) weather and yesterday I had snow landing on my palette.... For the most part spring has sprung in Maine and the grass is getting greener (finally!) .

I have decided that just one last gray scale comparison will do it this week and thought it was a good one to do this with, here's why. The colors are what some would call "crazy" or "Imaginative" I see these colors as fine comparisons of warm/cool and lighter/darker but you can judge for yourself. Either way it works in the gray scale and proves a point that a value is only a light or a dark in comparison to the value next to it.. If you took the unlit side of the building in this piece and made a sample chip to hold up to other paintings you would see that it could be a "Light", in this one it works as "in shadow. This piece was painted at Cozy Harbor in Boothbay, its 8x10.

The top piece is from a day up on Mount Battie here in Camden Maine. It was a day of on and off rain, this one is when the rain clouds left for the day. I am not sure why the top left of the image looks dirty??? In real life it is clean color. This piece is a 20x16.

Quote" "I have observed a number of works which actually lead one to assume that certain people's eyes show them things differently from the way they really are ... who perceive - or as they would doubtless say 'experience' - the meadows as blue, the sky as green, the clouds as sulphurous yellow, and so on ... I wish to prohibit such unfortunates, who clearly suffer from defective vision, from trying to foist the products of their faulty observation on to their fellow men as though they were realities, or indeed from dishing them up as 'art'."Adolf Hitler, 1937.

there.. do you really wanna have to the same opinions on color as that guy????

"The craving for colour is a natural necessity just as for water and fire. Colour is a raw material indispensable to life. At every era of his existence and his history, the human being has associated colour with his joys, his actions and his pleasures."-- Frenand Leger, "On Monumentality and Color", 1943.

I'm guessing these two didn't share a six pack.. LOL.. thanks for stopping by, Dan

Values..... what have you done to me?...

OK the title is a little dramatic... Here are some more images in both Color and black and white. Please let me know what you think of these in comparison of the B+W versus the Color. Also let me know if these comparisons are affecting any your work and helping you keep values on the front of your mind, I would love to hear the feedback.

Images from top to bottom, 12x16, 8x10, 6x8.

Quote: "…As I understand it, we of course agree perfectly about black in nature. Absolute black does not really exist. But like white, it is present in almost every color, and forms the endless variety of grays -- different in tone and strength. So that in nature one really sees nothing else but those tones or shades. " Van Gogh..

A Month and A Day

Wheeew it has been a month and a day since my last post... First off I would like to dispel any rumors that my blog is closing down and that I joined the peace corps or taken an apprenticeship with Ravi Shankar... In all honesty I have been working real hard on accessing where I am with my painting and what I need to work on to move forward.
What I have come up with is Values... I have always been pushing colors as far as I can and as a result my work has always stayed towards the middle of the road value wise. The side effect of this mid value bias is less impact visually and can sometimes (OK alot of the time) lull you to mental sleep.. Don't get me wrong I feel that a near white mid tone and almost black value scheme is the absolute worst. The lack of mid tone finesse can push away even the greenest of viewers on to the next image. So here is a collection of a few pieces in Color and Black + White. Let me know which ones you think worked out better or worse and if the value patterns seem too busy.... I think that's my next focus



I also would love to hear how the photos are looking compared to before, the bottom one is one I have had a few "re photo" requests for, so here it is.



Two Quote Tuesday. Both Paul Cezanne.



Quote: "Painting is damned difficult ... you always think you've got it, but you haven't."



Quote2: "I want to die painting."