My Landscape.. Sorta.

My "landscape" painting assignment was definitely an experience. Not finding an interesting place on campus, Emma, Anne and I ventured to a new location that I had found which contained a more complicated landscape (in hindsight... not my best idea.)
I have never been a person to do art quickly, and this was no exception. Though one of my goals for the year is to be able to work quicker. I would love to be able to paint a landscape in less time. I have yet to finish my painting... that's been going on for a week... and I'm not even close.
The parts of my painting I did finish I worked on pretty hard and am proud of my effort, but the actual product is less impressive. I liked painting in watercolor, but I chose to paint with a small brush and paint very detailed, causing me not to finish. I clearly need to take a better approach next time, but overall: good learning experience.

Three Things I Did Well:
1. gained experience with watercolor
2. good composition
3. background wash of color - SO HELPFUL!

Three Things I Need to Improve:
1. speed
2. less detail originally
3. depth

Landscape Mentors

"The natural world is constant inspiration for me."

i'm trying to paint a stone wall right now - so hard!

As my first official post, since we're working on being able to paint landscapes, I decided to find a landscape painter to be my mentor. Like Smitty suggested, just googling "landscape painters" brought up some pretty good results; I was looking for someone whose work I really liked that I had never heard of before! My mentor this week is Joseph McGurl.
Joseph McGurl is a really talented landscape painter. His paintings use shadow and light so perfectly it looks like a photo, but his pictures still look artistic. The detail in his paintings is amazing, but it's the color, composition, lighting, and different areas of emphasis that make his works stand out to me. Also, I love the subjects he uses; his landscapes, though my favorites are the seascapes, range from European country to boats under sail.

love the contrast!

love the shadow in the background and light on the water!

I used to love realism, it's not my favorite type of work anymore. However, McGurl is definitely a realist. His use of realism is impressive, but by looking around his website, what I liked most was the page describing him as an artist. He loved art, and took classes in Boston, as a teenager. His artist's statement (linked above) was really interesting to read! Also, I loved how much he respected the skill, and drawing ability (my favorite!) of all artists and looked for inspiration everywhere around him, from people and nature. He also said that all his paintings were done from, often, sketches of the places before he painted them; I liked to read that professional artists like to sketch first, because that's what I like to do too!

Amazing lighting!

I like the perspective (and space!)

"These paintings are about the study of light, space, and color interpreted through paint." 

  three of my favorite elements and principles!

I can't handle directions

shouldn't be this confusing...

so i read the directions to create a blog and follow other blogs... but beyond that i'm pretty clueless. i'm not good enough at technology to make my blog "represent me," and i clearly have nothing important and artsy to say... so i'll just ask tomorrow. close enough.