3:50 PM: more changes today to these two paintings. see yesterdays blog post to make comparisons & read my commentary.
7 PM: so now i have a bit more time to review todays revisions. i was holding the thought that the paintings in this sseries needed to be painted in one or two sittings in order to have the same immediacy and freshness of my plein air works. wrong! actually, every morning when i enter the studio i see where i need to focus my attention. going back in doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t have that immediacy and freshness. especially when the oil paint is still a little wet from the previous day & i can, for example, blend the greys with off whites of wispy, fluffy clouds. as a result, and this can only be appreciated in person, the painting begins to approach the level of subtlety we see when gazing at the actual sky. still, it’s a PAINTING; marks, strokes on a 2 dimensional surface. if you google sky painitngs, you will find a plethora of, truth be told BAD paintings. the sky is easy pickins for painters who have little or no foundation in draftsmanship and sparce, if any, knowledge of the history of art. how did the artists of pomeii for example, paint their skies on the walls of their magnificent structures? constable? van gogh? jacob van ruisdael?
