CELEBRATE THE ARRIVAL OF FALL

FALL IS IN THE AIR TODAY!! It has been a hot summer in North Carolina as in many places in the South so this cool weather is truly appreciated. I just painted a small painting of a barren tree (done very heavy - impasto style) against an impressionistic background of fall colors. I love doing these quick paintings. This one is 8 x 10 and the sides of the wrapped canvas are also painted so it can be easily hung without the need or expense of a frame.....looks neat when the design continues around the edges and extends the experience of viewing as you approach from the side.

Autumn Splendor - Original Oil by Nancy Craig

A BEAUTIFUL VIDEO

As artists we are taught to look at nature and study the colors and experience the shapes in order to paint them.  I do try to take time to slow down and look when I see beautiful flowers but this video really struck me as something I wanted to share with others.  It is a beautiful video showing flowers as they open in all their glory - a must see! 

http://vimeo.com/27920977

In Thanks to Helen Van Wyk

One of my very favorite artists is Helen Van Wyk.  Her talented career ended with her early death in 1994 at age 64 but many are fortunate to enjoy her books and get to know her from her famous television series.  Her shows are now rerun on our local Public Broadcasting Station and I faithfully watch or record her show each Friday.  I own several of her books including her wonderful Color Recipes which has proved to be a very valuable tool when searching for the perfect way to portray something I am working on.  I was fascinated by a recent show in which she painted several glass containers.....what a wonderful lesson I learned watching her.  The lesson here was NOT to paint the container!  She simply put in some very well placed highlights and shadows and voila a glass container appeared.  Such is the magic that can happen on a canvas when you know what you are doing!  If her show is available in your area you might want to take a look - her weekly show was called "Welcome to my Studio" .  I recall Helen often saying that it doesn't matter what we paint - whether it is a still life, portrait or landscape - the technique is always the same and the artist can paint any subject matter.  I always believed that I could not paint flowers and I certainly can never paint them the way Helen did but taking her advice I recently completed my first floral and using her simple style of determining a shape, putting in the darks, adding the highlights and with fingers (or should I say brushes) crossed I actually produced two believable pink carnations.

 PINK DELIGHTS by Nancy Craig

 Thank you Helen! Now I recognize that they look nothing like ones she would have painted but she did give me the courage to try and I am grateful. 

What is Impasto

IMPASTO is a style of painting in which the paint is applied very heavily quite often with a palette knife.  The brush or kinfe strokes are usually visible. The result is that the finished canvas can have a great deal of texture to it.  The texture affects the way light hits the canvas and adds expressiveness to the painting.  It can - if used heavily enough - transform a painting into a three dimensional almost sculptural presentation.   Many of the impressionist painters such as Vincent Van Gogh painted in this fashion. 

Because of the slow drying time and thickness of the paint, oil is the perfect medium for doing this type of painting.  The word "impasto" is Italian in origin and in Italian it means dough or mixture and the verb form can translate as to knead or to paste. 

In the first painting below which is titled Woodshed in Autumn  the stone wall and the leaves on the ground in the foreground are done in a medium impasto style and the leaves on the trees are also done impasto with a palette knife which gives additional texture to the painting.

In this second painting which is titled Tranquility the texture of the snow is applied very heavily in a more evident impasto technique which adds to the impression of mounds of snow in the foreground.

Both of these paintings can be seen in greater detail at my site at Fine Art America and in the better detail the impasto technique will be more evident

This is just one technique used by artists and  many paintings actually are comprised of a variety of techniques.  Both of the paintings above are done partly by brush and partly by palette knife.  Can you tell by looking at them where the brush and palette knife were used?