Postcard From Italy - Venetian Views

The beginning of the Venice Biennale has arrived. Whether or not you like contemporary art, Venice is one of the most beautiful and fitting places to host an exhibit this huge (88 participating countries).

Art-loving hordes of tourists and modern art afficionados not for you? Well here are a few images I shot while the hordes were a bit more navigable prior to this years event.

More Venice shots to share with you next post, in the meantime you can always visit the events website by clicking here.

Gettysburg Tribute Progress

Here are a few more pencil drawings that I am planning to use in some, visual tributes to the battle of Gettysburg I'm doing this year - the 150th anniversary of the historic battle on my home state’s soil.

Longstreet

Willfully doing less “shading” and more building up tone exclusively with lines on these.

Hancock

Mainly because I think lines will convert better for the final look I’m after when these become digital files.

Lincoln

More to come soon!

A Painting Within a Painting

"Roadster" is my third in a series of still lifes with an automotive theme, and it was recently awarded the “viewers choice” prize in the USCLA annual exhibit here in Pittsburgh.

"Roadster" 18x24 inches, oil

I've been shooting reference images of classic cars for years and I initially was going to execute paintings of entire cars. At some point that idea morphed into what I thought would make a more interesting and powerful composition - zooming in on one elegant piece of the car and painting that one element.

The fun thing is, the undulating curves along with the reflective nature of these hood ornaments causes them to really distort their surroundings which allows me the freedom to execute an almost abstract miniature painting within the larger painting!

Boom! My first abstract painting!!

Steeler Still Life - The Shadows

One element that helps the lights pop out of this still life is the rich dark shadows. After all, you can’t have light without first having darks. Funny thing is, you don’t realize until you actually mix colors that the richest, most pleasing “blacks” can (and should) be achieved using no black paint at all.

“Mini-Helmet, Commemorative Edition”, 10x14 inches, oil

One other method of giving your area of interest that luminous effect is by keeping the edges of the painting either in complete shadow, or just generally darkening the areas that are closest to the edge of the painting, even if they are not in shadow.

Photographers call this effect an “edge vignette”. To me this is one of the most subtle yet effective techniques I have ever seen in improving the impact of an image. I apply this effect to almost every digital photo I process, and paint it into many of the paintings I execute. Here are a couple examples:

A photograph without and edge vignette:

Nice image, but a bit flat.

The same image after applying an edge vignette:

Viewers eyes stay away from the edges.

Here is the same type of thing but to a lesser degree, in oil paint:

“Point of Impact”, 11x14 inches, oil

The thing to remember is, when going for this look in oil paint you kind of have to plan ahead and place your darks first, working up to the lights. In processing a digital photo however, this is one of the last and easiest steps to take.

Steeler Still Life - The Lights

One Still Life of mine that just won an award as well as gotten many positive comments from viewers is this one:

“Mini-Helmet, Commemorative Edition”, 10x14 inches, oil

The reason that folks like this piece (even if they don’t care for the subject) is the quality of the light. It’s luminous.

Luminous light like this happens in reality when a highlight hits a subject that is on a dark background, and the highlight is so intense that the light “spills” over the edge of the subject and softenes the subjects edge. The light that spills over the subject is then diffused onto the dark background making it lighter. The overall effect is one of a soft glow, with a hard light in the center.

The main area of light “spillage”.

Luminous light like this happens in oil paint when you avoid putting down a hard-edged daub of white paint while ignoring how it affects the surrounding areas. Those type of highlights work only on certain objects, like on a porcelain vase for instance.

I believe this luminous effect is acheived most pleasingly in oil paint, much more so than any other medium - Part of the reason I’ve been in love with oil paint for over a decade.

In actuality the light wasn’t all that intense when I set this scene up and lit it in my studio, but I knew it would make a pleasing effect when I rendered it properly in oil. Besides, true artists never merely copy their subjects. They always impart their own feelings into their work by whatever means they can.