Art by Bob Abrahams

BLUE FLOWERS

Blue Flowers
9"x12" oil paint on canvas covered MDF board
I consider this finished. The yellow background really makes the painting sing. Will probably frame it if I can persuade a gallery to hang it. What do you think about a gallery price for me $500
Thanks for your assistance Jeremy.
This not a very good photo. Will replace with a better one soon

Hi Bob

On the basis of the photo with a good frame $500 sounds reasonable to me.  I would take the advice of the gallery on the pricing, there is no incentive for them to inflate or reduce the price as they will be on a percentage and they will have the best idea of what their clients would be prepared to pay.

Give it the best frame you can afford.  I have had paintings double in value by spending more on the frames.  The saleability depends on appearance more than price and the appearance depends greatly on the framing.

Go to a good framer, I have used Charles at Accent Framers now at 58a Grantham Street, WEMBLEY, WA  6014 for many years.  I dont know if you have dealt with Charles but most of his framing is for artists and he can be very creative in his framing.  On a small work like this often a very heavy gold frame can work well, but Charles would advise you.  I always rely on the advice of the framer as they are much better at choice of frame than I am.

Charles will also advise you on selling the painting if you ask him.  He may be interested in putting it into his Dalkeith gallery. Maria Kuczborska runs the gallery and I am sure she would be very happy to talk to you about your work.  Its a good idea to ring and make appointments with gallery directors as they are usually busy and you will get squeezed for time if you just turn up on the doorstep.  A couple of years ago I visited several galleries in the Eastern States and they all said that they were inundated with artists wanting them to handle their work.  Many of them will not even consider new artists.  Developing a good relationship with a gallery is essential.

If anything price on the low side rather than the high.  You need to get as many sales as you can especially in the early years.  The more paintings you have on peoples walls the greater the demand for your work.  So volume is more important than margin.

Also you will need to gradually increase the price of your paintings as your reputation grows.  Collectors of your work will want to see the value of their investment appreciating.   The important thing to realise is that you can't go backwards in pricing.  Nobody wants to buy a painting and then see its value reduce.  If you start from a low base then its easier for you to increase prices which will keep previous buyers happy and demonstrate that your work is a good investment.

Good luck

Jeremy

Monet-ish complment.

Maxwell
Thanks very much for your "Monet-ish" complment.
I strive to paint like the impressionists.
I am unable to send comments to your Blogger and I do not have your email address, perhaps you or Jeremy could fix this up

Cheers
Bob

CANNA PLANT

CANNA PLANT

This is an oil painting of a Canna plant on 9"x 12" canvas covered MDF board was completed to this stage in 2.5 hrs, on location at the Ellis House Community Art Centre Bayswater on 16 December 2004.

It was the strong warm colours of the Canna flowers in the rather soft sunlight on that day that attracted my attention. I was looking down at the scene from the verandah of the art centre. It had challenges in defining such a colourful image. I feel that my painting is unfinished and currently looking at options to take it further in my home studio by referring to enhanced digital photographs.

The challenges are:

1) Finding suitable colours on our palettes to match the crimson, green, orange and yellow flowers.

2) Seeing tonal differences necessary for an effective composition.

Please check my Blogger Art Gallery http://bobsgallery.blogspot.com/ for photographs of the the subject.
 

Hi Bob

At last I am up and going with my laptop.

This painting is not working that well for me but I am not sure why.      

I think that you are correct that the problems are in colours, tones and composition, but that’s almost everything. It’s very difficult for me to critique abstract paintings as I prefer figurative works and although I know if I like an abstract painting or not, I frequently don’t know why, except in terms of design and pattern.   

This painting is almost abstract in its looseness.   

Let’s start with tone. As you know, the only rule in painting is that there are no rules, but the painting would be livelier if it had more tonal contrast. Even the yellows are dark yellows which scarcely emerge from the background. There is a rule in watercolours about preserving your whites and watercolour paintings really sing when you have a wide tonal range from the white of the paper to the darkest of darks. I think this also applies to oils and I would suggest widening the tonal range.   

You have the darks of the stalks but these are in a very limited area. At one time I was very smitten by the idea that you should have large tonal masses in a painting. I observed that many famous artists do this. So maybe there could be big dark areas with small lights and big light areas with small darks.   

I think the colours are OK, the only colour that jars a bit it the green at the bottom right. My gut feel says weaken it and add some red into that area. The greens in the background are not at all disturbing.   

Composition. Having looked at the photo of the flowers I am not surprised that the painting has compositional problems, it’s not really a very interesting photo. I guess it’s a challenge to make it work but why not start with a more lively subject?   

Looking at the photo, the area I find most interesting is the tonal contrast between the light ground on the left and the dark under the edges of the leaves (ferns?).   

It’s sometimes useful to view a subject in emotional terms and then try to recreate that emotion in the painting. In this photo the ferns seem to be reaching out and overcoming the Canna plant. It’s almost as though the Canna is standing against the tide (tsunami?) a lone vertical figure proud against the horizontal reaching fingers of the ferns, but that would be another painting.   

You have a lovely loose style Bob which works so well but looking at all of the paintings in your

Boab Art Gallery

I think they generally suffer from a lack of design or composition. I would concentrate on your thumbnail sketches doing several before you start to paint. Create interesting areas of light and dark in the sketches and fill the area of the canvas.  Look at balance and contrast. Create negative shapes.   

When you have a sketch that works well, use this as the basis of the design of your painting (the arrangement of shapes, tones and lines). Then do the plein air alla prima painting at which you are so accomplished within that framework   

Please bear in mind that I am advising you from the point of view of my own personal taste. I like a painting that has a strong and exciting design but many collectors prefer paintings which are perhaps more realistic and high key. A painting like your Mount Henry Bridge, which I think is one of the best of your landscapes, may well sell easily due to its overall style, but I think its weakness is in its composition.  Incidentally ‘Blue Flowers’ is looking great.   

Jeremy

Sailing boats and water lilies

Hi Bob

I am back in Perth and using a borrowed system although I hope to have my laptop ready by tomorrow.

I will try to catch up with your latest paintings.

Dingies on Matilda Bay Dec 04 003 3 - its fascinating the way in which the painting has changed.  I think you are quite right, it is an entirely different painting now and has gained in some ways but lost in others.  It’s a good painting and I get a lovely feeling of space.

The painting appears to have lost some of its 'punch' due to a reduction in the tonal contrasts (although its difficult to tell whether this is just a difference in the two images on the monitor).

My feeling is that the path the beach makes into the centre of the painting is too strong now and needs to be interrupted by something in the foreground which is now a bit empty.  I am not sure what you could use here, maybe a boat close in to the viewer or just dark grass.

The three boats on the left are a too regular and this is accentuated by the regularity of the tree trunks you have inserted behind them.  I always find that when I invent something in a painting it tends to come out a bit limited and almost childlike.  If I paint a tree from nature it looks much better than a tree I invent, which tends to be a stereotype of a tree with trunk and foliage above.

I think this is what has happened with the boats and the trees on the left.

I have a slight logic problem with the fact that all the boats on the land have their sales fully up whereas you would expect some of them to just have masts showing.  I appreciate that it’s difficult to make the masts show in such a loose impressionistic painting.

The boats on the left are also a bit large compared with the boats on the right based on their apparent position in space.  They should be a bit further down the canvas to be consistent I think.

I can’t be prescriptive as to how to solve these problems but I do think that its worthwhile spending some more time on the painting, Bob.  It’s got great potential and it would be instructive to find a solution to the left hand side.  Maybe you could copy in something from nature or from a photograph.

‘Summer Garden’ is another lovely little painting.  Max said your blue flowers were very Monet and this is even more so.  I remember standing in the Monet room in the Museum of Modern Art in New York surrounded by all those huge water lily paintings.  Amazing.  Very difficult to critique though as they are almost abstract.

I think the foreground flowers are working beautifully as is the background water.  I have a slight problem with the centre of the painting.  I am not really sure why but I think that the mass of yellow and orange flowers is too dense and I would like to see some blue water showing through them.  Maybe the shape is too regular compared with the broken shapes in the rest of the painting.  It’s just a feeling I have.  The central area also seems to come forward, maybe that’s part of the problem.

I don’t think I can add anything else.  It’s a nice painting, I like it.

Jeremy

SUMMER GARDEN 2004

This the final version of the 9x12" oil painting done ala prima on location over 2 hrs with about 1.5 hrs adjusting and cleaning up in the studio. Several modifications were made along the lines suggested by you Jeremy

Dingies on Matilda Bay Dec 04 003 3

Jeremy

I removed the yacht club because it was to difficult to modify. As you suggested this completely changed the composition. It opened up the painting and allowed the viewer to enter and move around. However, I feel the composition is still not working and would be pleased to receive your suggestions.

Blue Flowers 2 001 2web

Hi Jeremy

I have gone as far as I can on "Blue Flowers" for the moment. I was searching for a break through with a bold image and to push colour as far as possible. I feel that I have achieved that.

Thanks for your help

Bob