by Martin Scorsese

"Have conviction of how the muse strikes you. And go there."
Martin Scorsese

Monday, April 13, 2015

Wrong, oh No

Oh my!  I just worked on the poppy painting again.  It was wrong.  The flower in the lower right front was showing as behind the smaller one which is behind, now it's fixed.  Wow!  I couldn't put my finger on the problem but I knew there was one...what a relief!  Halleluler! (to quote O).

Now onto other things in my head which is a running thought about making a turn in the road, and getting more grounded here in my home and community.  Don't know how or when I am going to work on this but I think I have really already started.

I only wish I had taken another picture of the poppy painting before I gave it away.  Oh well!

Praying for Sight

I have been working on this painting for about a year now, in and out of other projects and responsibilities.  It's for family, and I am doing it from a photo taken off of the Internet which I don't do at all...but in this case, my daughter in law wants a specific scene for her dining room so I took on this project.

It's very one dimensional here, oh I guess one can see that the canal is in the foreground and moving through the street of houses; and we see that we are looking at the buildings from the side.  The bridge and water are still one dimensional, and the fronts of the houses still need some dimension and color changes so that we can imagine they are somewhat weather worn.

Boats need work in that the perspective is wrong, they need to be more upright and not so open to the viewer looking into their bottoms.

I can only make this painting better at this point.  Pray!

Crafties and Do-dads

I find myself being so judgmental of a "critique" I recently attended.

The expert is a professor, a long time artist, of hispanic descent I surmise; somebody I should be proud to know and consider to be very credible in his opinions.  Should is the important word here because I came away with a bad taste regarding the totality of the event.

With the first few paintings, he was not overly informative but he gave enough to the individual artists for them to go further with their piece.  Then I noted his lack of constructive criticism, only doing a complimentary sentence or two on each piece.  I understand that some pieces had very little to criticize, however we spectated-artists really want ideas on ways to keep our art pertinent.

For a few pieces that were totally not fine art, amateurish and with a complete lack of composition ...he was only able to complement.   There were so many ideas these artists needed.

Then I thought about the rest of us.  If those pieces were representations of good art, fine art...where are we, We that are serious about our hobby, our retirement vocation, our wish for a valid art show?

At the end of the day, I asked the expert "did he dumb his critique down" for us.  He didn't know what I meant kind of fumbling with his words.  Then the person that arranged this farce, said to me he wasn't dumbing down but being kind as other past critique-ers had totally been inappropriately too critical.

Whew!  Feel better now that I have written about this.  I will not be attending next year's luncheon however will be keeping my feelings to myself with fellow art club members.  I am far too judgmental and un-nice for this kind of stuff.  It's the first time I have felt like a little old lady doing my crafty pictures and do-dads.