Another annoying dissection

Some unattractive event involving a spleen.

Our next patient is duct taped wide eyed to the gurney and yammering something about going home, and its mother, lets operate, and quickly, before it gets away!

Here is the piece as it was sent to me. Its a nice piece of work, done by a practiced artist with a real feeling of truth to it. I had a few little changes I felt like making and I resected its abdomen in photoshop and came up with this.

Here is what I did and why.With bullets, even were they not called bullets, I might still use them, it does give a well informed look to my writing.

• Like I did with another piece this week I cropped the image on the right a little. That had several benefits, but mostly it got that tree out of the middle of the painting and off to one side. I felt that looked better, less static.
• I cropped the bottom too, but for a different reason. I like to throw the "footlights" of a painting out a little further than the first image did. It is difficult to paint everything from your toes to the zenith. The reason for this is that it makes the viewer feel as if they need to move their head on its stalk in order to perceive all of the image. When they feel that way it is hard to keep them believing. It is something to watch out for on the horizontal axis too, although less so. Again it is easily done, the luminist painters did it a lot, but you have to be aware of what you are up to and account for it.
• Cropping the image did tighten up to the best part of the painting and I feel like I closed in a the story and eliminated some non essential stuff. It is a tighter story now.
• I worked on the tree branches a bit. I removed a couple that just ended on the left hand side. They were no doubt actually like that but I think they looked kind of amputated. They cause the viewer to hesitate, what happened to them? Lets not give that viewer a reason to reject our picture, shall we?
• I upholstered the branches of the left hand tree and the one in the middle of the painting with the fine haze like twigs which often occur against the sky this time of year. I also threw in some little dry leaves that the wind left on those branches. I like to do that because it gives a decorative look to those situations and allows me some accents and implied detail.
  
• I removed a fence post and some branches that were clawing their way in on the right. I felt the area would be better if it was "decluttered".
• In the middle distance I mixed things up a little more. I dropped some notes recalling bare branches over that blue and I toned the whole blue passage down. I also made that group of trees a little more important.
• Lastly I straightened out that back field where it met the tree line. It seemed concave. Concave lines are generally to be avoided in landscape, the earth tends to be formed out of bulges, convex lines. Concave lines give a sickly look to a landscape.

The snow camp workshop is full. Several people e-mailed me at one time or another saying that January is not so good for them. Is any one out there interested in a February snow painting workshop at the same inn? Please e-mail me at stapletonkearns@gmail.com and let me know.

A little off the top please

Dissecting the genitalia of the male Cactus Moth by Richard L. Brown of the Mississippi entomological museum

Its dissection time again here too. So spritz a little alcohol on those moth abdomens, grab your
Dumont Forceps and lets open a few of them up!

I got this image to critique and I scratched my head for a while. Its got nice color and the values are pleasing, but it lacks something. The artist was smart not making it too symmetrical, but it still just misses. It is I think one of those situations where it seemed really cool when you were standing in front of it. A great concept and the waterfall was exciting. But it just didn't work as well in paint as in reality. I have made plenty of those myself.

I think It would probably have been advisable to back up a bit and get something else into the painting. I was reminded of these two paintings by deceased Gloucester artist Frederick Mulhaupt, both feature arched bridges like yours. I don't know that they are so similar but he was working with the same problems. There is also a Theodore Wendell of the Ipswich bridge that I went looking for and couldn't find online.



I think both of these, but particularly the upper, play a structure of verticals against the arched shape. They show two different kinds of shapes juxtaposed against one another, the arch and the vertical tree shapes.

Contrasting one sort of shape with another group of shapes that are very different is often a very effective way to build a composition. This is a concept that rock nd roll uses all the time. Think about how rock musicians often set up a tune, They will have a very sweet A section and than contrast it with a very brutal, minor or crashing B section, they alternate back and forth, each contrasting with and relieving the other. The British invasion bands were extremely fond of this, the Beatles used it all the time. But I thought I would use this other example,



There are only three spaces left in the snow painting workshop. If you want to sign up, you can do that here.

Snow Camp 2

Here are a couple more shots I took the other day at the Sunset Hill House

I have had a long day. I visited my little sister and her husband for Thanksgiving and we ate and ate . We had turkey (did you know there is a chemical in turkey that makes you thankful?) and stuffing and three kinds of pie. I took my own Moxie as I knew I couldn't count on them to have it. Now I am exhausted. So tonight's post is going to be a plug for snow camp and then, maybe I can find one small thing that I can say to be useful to those of you who are unable to come. Every night when I write the blog I always ask myself, have I said something that will be useful to the readers?

The details of the inn package are worked out and on the page for reserving the workshop, that's here.
The only thing I missed before is that the inn is including a three course meal for all of us in a private dining room that Sunday evening. When I do workshops, if I can, I like to do a total immersion thing. That is, paint all day and then get the whole class together for dinner so we can talk art and experience the camaraderie of the other artists. I think it is possible to squeeze a lot more in that way. So when I do a workshop we generally eat, sleep, and breathe art for the entire time. Being in an inn up in the mountains is the perfect way to do that. I was up there again the other day, scheming with Nancy the innkeeper about how best to do the workshop and I think I have really broken the code this time. It is just such a perfect setup. The class is half filled already, so if you want to sign up , now would be a good time. I think it will fill quickly as I am deliberatly limiting it to ten students.

Now lets see, something useful, but not too ambitious, How about this...........

Opposite colors, or compliments as they are called, have opposite effects depending on how they are presented together. They can either make their opposite brighter, or more grave, here's how. If you mix two compliments, you get a gray color, but if you put two compliments side by side, they each look their brightest. So always be aware of whether a colors opposite is already, or should be, introduced into a passage to accentuate that color. Conversely if you want to keep a color from speaking too loudly, and hold its place in the choir, rather than sing a solo, you add its compliment. So a colors compliment is the key to making it both brighter or grayer!

Watch that you are managing compliments intentionally rather than having accidental compliments control your color for you. Color is a great servant but a lousy master. There.

Thanksgiving

Norman Rockwell image from artrenewal.org.

Above is "Freedom from Want", painted in 1943. The world was in flames. In January of 1943 The battle of Stalingrad ended with the surrender of the German sixth army. Stalingrad was the bloodiest battle in the history of the world, leaving two million dead. America fought the battle of Guadalcanal earlier that year. Sicily and then Italy were invaded by allied forces .We know now how the Second World War would end, but in 1943 the outcome was, of course, not known. All over the globe men fought and died to stop totalitarian Germany and Japan from enslaving the world. Seventy million lives were sacrificed to the Moloch of Nazi ambition.
Many who saw this painting must have wondered if they would ever see their familys again, and many of them didn't. Those at home wondered when they would see their husbands and sons at a happy Thanksgiving table again too.

This must be Grandma and Grandpa at the head of the table with the turkey she has cooked, after setting it on the table Grandpa would have proudly led the family in a prayer of thanksgiving for all that they had. I think he would have prayed for victory overseas and a safe return of their family and neighbors from battle. He would have prayed for an economic recovery as the nation had been in the great depression for over a decade.

We are in a war overseas again today, the casulties are numbered in the hundreds and not by the millions, and our nations economy is weakened, but it isn't nearly as damaged as it was in the thirties. Our food is not rationed as that families certainly was, and while we are concerned about the future, it has never looked as bleak in my lifetime as it must have in 1943.

I suggest that we try to feel the hope and thankfulness that Americans did when this painted prayer of thankfulness shone like a candle in the darkness. This Thanksgiving I will thank God for my family, and ask his blessing upon my friends, and my comrades in art, for you who are reading this, and for our nation.

Happy Thanksgiving and God bless you................Stape