Blogging Along, Revising the Paintings,Goat Cheese

My rubber chicken is now installed in his rightful place atop my easel. I have named it Jackie, in honor of my good friend and extraordinary painter, Jackie Schindehette HERE


Painting of the Day




Three Palms
4x6 inches
gouache on acid free mat
mounted to 5x7 for easy framing

40.00
2.00 shipping

Yesterday I spent a fair amount of time updating my Florida Paint Out Blog. Fortunately, there are only certain times of the year that I need to post to it. I only post about the paint outs that I personally go to and those are limited to four or five a year.

The longer I blog, the more value I see in the process. It is wonderful to read and share so much information related to my career in blogs. It is simply amazing to read about the diverse and wonderful lives of artists around the world. Blogging has opened the world of artists and their lives to many collectors and art lovers. We are a quirky and interesting group in society and always have been. What would it have been like to have blogs by Monet, Rembrandt, Picasso,Sargent? It boggles the mind!! I think the Internet has provided all of us with an entirely different approach to our art and selling art. We no longer have a local audience, but instead, an international one. I am always amazed at artists who will not use the Internet to share their art. That seems a major handicap in this day and age.

I've had a day or two to look at my painting from the paint out. They were fine as plein air pieces but I see many revisions which would improve them. I think that is why I've always been a better studio painter than plein air. Last night I started going through them to tweak here and there and improve them. Since I care nothing about the purity of plein air and don't market them as plein air, I have no problem with improving them in studio. My bottom line has always been to get the best painting possible in the end. To not improve a painting because of the plein air mystique is silly to me. I will have the plein air police throwing me in the clink in a minute :>), purists that they are.

The first thing I noticed overall is too much development in the wrong areas of the paintings. Too much fussy detail where it should have been minimal. The other glaring error was the NOTAN process which went out the window. There is so much pressure to paint at those events that I have problems concentrating on what I should be thinking about. All of those careful months of study and process go South when I am out there producing as much as I can to sell at the event. Of course, this is the case for most of the other painters too. It is the nature of alla prima to have messy, unrefined work. It is actually all the rage these days, but I just can't stand it for my own work.

I don't want to send the message here that the paintings were not successful. In fact, they were a vast improvement over last year's work. The body of work looked quite good and I was proud of it. It's just that in the studio, I start to see things I want to change. This is inevitable for me, like a sickness. Rarely can I leave plein air work alone after having a day or two to look at it. The thing I am most happy about with this years body of work is the palette. Very consistent and good. Very harmonious. I used my modified Zorn palette for this paint out and I was well pleased with it.

Here is a revised painting from the event.



Pink Grasses
12x16 inches
oil on panel


The changes were very simple for this one. I put a transparent wash over the tree canopy to darken it slightly. I touched up the grasses here and there, enhancing the contrast and put a few sky holes into the tree canopy. A good improvement for a basically successful painting. It took about five minutes to tweak with few changes.


Today's Recipe

Goat Cheese Appetizer

5 lemons, zested
3 tablespoons freshly chopped rosemary leaves
1/2 cup EVOO
8 rounds goat cheese
Cracked black pepper


Combine lemon zest, rosemary, and olive oil.
Place goat cheese in a baking dish or on a large plate and spoon marinade over the top. Season with fresh cracked pepper. Refrigerate and let marinate.

Slice and serve with crackers.