Art by Bob Abrahams

Dingy's Matilda Bay in Progress 002

Dingy's Matilda Bay in Progress 002 Originally uploaded by boab.

I started this painting on location, Matilda Bay Sat 27 Nov 2004. This is far as I could go in 2 hrs. I Stopped because the paint was too wet to continue. Very thickly applied with knife. In a day or so I will probably see f I can clean it up and do alittle fine tuning in the studio

Hi Bob

That looks like Nedlands Sailing Club where I spent many a happy Saturday afternoon sailing Lazy E's.

I love the feel of the painting and the impasto texture. It really captures that sunny summer's afternoon feeling of Perth.

I think that there is a problem with the design of the painting, in that the club house is both drawing the eye and blocking access to the distant view.

There are several reasons why the club house has this effect:

· The diagonal of the beach in the foreground draws your eye to the club house.

· It uses different colours from the rest of the painting.

· Consisting of squares and rectangles it used different shapes from the rest of the painting.

All this makes it dominant.

How to fix these problems?

The easy one to fix is the way in which the club house stops the eye from accessing the distant view. Somebody said that a good landscape painting is one in which you can go into and walk around, or words to that extent. I would move the club house slightly to the left and allow some of the lovely foreground green grass to stretch alongside the beach into the grass which we know is behind the club house right up to the distant trees. You might need to remove the sailing dingy which is in the way.

The club house itself is more difficult. I often find in paintings that an object which is different to the rest of the work causes a problem as it draws the eye too much. You can modify reality to overcome this but it’s not easy to make a building blend with a boat or water. At the same time you don’t want to make the painting insipid either.

I think there is a real problem in this area of the painting but I am not sure how to address it so I will go through the reasons why I think it may be a problem and see how these could be changed.

· I don’t think there is much you could do about the diagonal leading into the building. Moving the club house to the left will to some extent allow the diagonal to go past the building into the background. At the same time if the club house occupies less of the paper this in itself will make it less dominant.

· Looking at it more carefully, you have already painted most of the building in the same colours used in the rest of the painting, violets, blues and whites. The exception is the browns which only occur in the club house. Maybe you could replace these with other colours such as the creams of the beach, combined perhaps with darker blues.

· I think you can do something about the shapes. Its difficult to see what is going on in the building (which is a problem in itself) but it appears to consist of a series of squares and rectangles with their sides aligned with the sides of the paper, whereas the shapes in the rest of the painting consists mainly of triangles. The dark green triangle on the left, the beach triangle, the blue water triangle and of courses the sails of the boats.

There is a very dominant square shape near the centre of the painting with a door in it, possibly the front of the club house. If this is facing the river surely it should be more diagonal converging with the line of perspective of the beach? This would assist the eye in moving past the building and at the same time create a more harmonious triangular shape. I think that is probably the most important area to address.

Of course Bob, if you make these changes you need to do with the same alla prima technique as the rest of the painting or they will detract from the beauty you have already capturedJ but that’s just part of the challenge.

Did you do some initial thumbnail sketches? I often find that I can work out these sorts of problems in the thumbnails so you don’t lose that feeling of immediacy in the painting itself.

Jeremy

Thanks Jeremy

You have given me much to think about and I will take a while to reflect on all that you said.

You wrote "Of course Bob, if you make these changes you need to do with the same alla prima technique as the rest of the painting or they will detract from the beauty you have already captured, but that’s just part of the challenge"

This is a most important question for me to address. I often continue to work in the studio on these en plein aire paintings and, as you say they are changed into something else because I change my technique and mode of thinking from perceptual to conceptial. What happens is that I often lose my way and abandon these paintings and this really frustating.

Of course, I can continue to work on this partiular painting on location , as you suggest, to maintain the freshness and alla prima style. On reflection, in this instance I think there are too many major design changes to think about. So I will start a new painting on location, this time, with composition, planning and preliminary sketches.

Also, as an exercise, without any expectation for a finished painting, I will experiment with this one in the studio implemeting some of your suggestions before starting the new one.

Thanks for your assistance

Bob

Comments on Blue Flowers Ellis

That looks great Bob. I looked at some of your other work on your new blog and I think its attractive and competent.

There are a couple of comments I can make about the new version of blue flowers.

I think the blooms at the top are a little bit evenly spaced. You could clump them together in places to make more varied shapes.

These are minor criticisms, I think the blooms at the top are a bit flat (in the plane of the painting) which in itself is quite valid, but it would be interesting to create a greater sense of depth by having some blooms behind the light blue ones which are darker as they are further away from the light.

Talking about light, I like the lighting on the vase and the shadow area to the right of the vase creating opportunities for light on dark as well as dark on light, but you could carry the direction of the lighting through to the blooms themselves as logically the blooms on the left should be lighter than the ones on the shade side to the right? The vase has a strong sense of three dimensional shape but the flowers don't, except the ones just above the mouth of the vase that come forward nicely.

BLUE FLOWERS ELLIS 2004-11-13 001 web

BLUE FLOWERS ELLIS 2004-11-13 001 web Originally uploaded by boab.

Jeremy

As you can see I have changed this considerably. I wanted the painting to have more drama and inpact.

I am not happy with quality of the image that has been uploaded wil try for bettwer version when finished,

Cheers

Bob

I prefer images 400 pixel wide

Hi Bob

I have standardised on 400 pixels wide thanks

Jeremy

Blue Flowers

Many thanks Jeremy for your interesting and helpful comments about my painting. I will return and study your suggestions in detail later.

I have entered a password and other info in my profile.
What size image do you prefer to be emailed 400x300??

I downloaded Hello and Frikr and tried both

Cheers
Bob

Comments on Blue flowers by Jeremy Holton

A lovely painting Bob, I like the delicate blues and violets of the flowers against the oranges of the background and the way that some blooms are more blurred than others giving an impression of depth. It would have been interesting to see the larger version. Did you take a photo of it?

It looks as though the oil paint is creating interesting impasto textures although that’s difficult to see in the photo.

Sometimes I cut up my paintings in an effort to make them work better. I have even had collectors buy the discarded section as they liked it in its own right!

The framing lifts it enormously and I wonder if this is because it gives it more structure and stability. A painting like this, which is almost abstract, often needs the edges of the frame to contain it and stop it from floating. I often put a vase into my flow paintings to provide an anchor for the eye. For example ‘Jonquils’ and ‘Daisy chain’ although looking at them I see that in both cases I have also anchored the painting with a hard light dark line in the background.

I can see that you have added a dark patch at the base of the flowers which does achieve some stability it also provides some variation where the light bloom is outlined against the darker background. I would experiment with either creating the outline of the vase or filling in a dark or light area to represent the vase.

A dark area has the advantage of allowing you to have some light flowers against a dark background as well as light flowers against a dark background, which creates more visual interest in a painting. I like to create structure in a painting and this can be difficult to do with a chaotic bunch of flowers so I may use a device such as a dark band, or a window frame, even a framed picture painted in the background. ‘Sincerely yours’ is an example of this.

I am not sure why, but I find the gap in the flowers at about 10-11 o’clock a bit disturbing. When painting radial flower stems like this you suddenly find that you have completed the circle and its become incredibly boring so then you add some spaces to disrupt the geometry of the painting. I can understand why you needed the gap but I have an uneasy feeling about it. I turned it upside down and felt the same way. I think a few stems in that area would probably improve it, but I have to say I don’t know why.

I look forward to seeing some more of your work Jeremy

Jonquils

Jonquils by Jeremy Holton, originally uploaded by Australian_artist.

Daisy chain

Daisy chain by Jeremy Holton, originally uploaded by Australian_artist.

Sincerely yours

'Sincerely yours by Jeremy Holton, originally uploaded by Australian_artist.

Bob Abrahams Painting 'Blue flowers'

Bob Abrahams Painting 'Blue flowers', originally uploaded by Australian_artist.