Loading...Brian's Morning Newsletter
February 4th 2010
Brian's impressionism (work in progress) of Claude Monet's Boat Studio
Good Morning
Snowed-in, except for Nell, who is taking her new office manager position very seriously and plans on driving through the foot of snow at some point this morning. Yesterday morning I was dressed for work, warmed the Trooper up and was down at Jackson's early enough to stop in for a chat and have a look at the floors, when it started snowing like mad. Visibility dropped to five hundred yards; I could just make out the wind turbine up at our place. I called Desertgate, and said, "I can work in this weather, but I can't see the towers." Sadly we canceled the three already once snow delayed WiFi installations from Friday. I was looking forward to a decent paycheck, of course, now it'll be average with two and a half days of work on it.
Like I said , Jack and I chatted for a bit, both of us hoping the linseed oil on his floor wasn't dry enough for the Defthane (plastic) coating to be applied. It was slowly dawning on me that I was going to be able to get some much needed rest. I drove out to the mailbox and picked up a couple of Netflix movies, which for the most part have lost much of its luster, now that we have streaming movies. It turned out that the two movies we received were pretty lame, all the good movies are back-ordered at NetFlix, I guess all their advertising is paying-off for them and now they don't have enough movies to go around. Typical corporate BS.
Never minding the little things, I was going to try the new paints, brushes and larger canvas boards. I put on a British TV show called Primeval http://www.bbcamerica.com/shows/primeval/ Pretty silly, but no matter, I wasn't really watching anyway. I was on a mission: I wanted to try something new with my artistic endeavors. I pulled up some Impressionism paintings from the Ibiblio web museum and looked closely at Claude Monet's Le bateau atelier. What I was after was hope. Yes hope that I could have some fun while admiring (not ruining) the artwork I've been touting as the best of the best, Impressionism.
Claude Monet – Le bateau atelier (The Boat Studio)
What did I see when I looked at Le Bateau Atelier with my newly found painters eyes? Honestly, it looked a little messy. This was just the thing I needed for encouragement. After all, messy shouldn't be too terribly difficult, and I'm pretty sure this painting took Monet an hour to throw together, I had all day. Still, where to begin? What do I like about this painting the most? The reflections, I love the way the impressionists paint reflections in water. Asking myself if I could reproduce any part of this painting crossed my mind ever so briefly. The answer of course was maybe I could do the foliage along the river edge, maybe.
Obviously lacking skills yet possessing earnest desire, I took the plunge beginning with a pencil, sketching the positions of each feature, flipping the board over for the reflection of the boat. Probably the most anticipated aspect of painting on the larger canvas for me is being able to use larger brushes. I had a lot more fun with the wide brushes, they really do go through a lot more paint though. At first I was trying to use similar colors, but that was too hard, so I gave that up and just used the colors as they mixed up on the palate. It was hard enough to mix the same shade twice ,let alone try and figure out how Monet made all the shades of blue and green he did.
Somewhere in the back of my mind I wanted to do the trees the same way, but so far I am satisfied with my paint dolloped effect, even though it looks nothing like the Monet. Yes sir, even with my naive mindset I can come nowhere near what I thought was slightly messy background in the Boat studio. I guess that's what makes Monet a master and me a beginner. It was interesting to look at individual brush strokes and try to figure out how the artist did what he did in creating a particular effect. I do see that Monet had more than one color on the brush, my question is how did he maintain the color separation stroke after stroke? Look carefully at the reflections, see how the top half of a particular stroke has a different shade of paint tan the bottom, as well as a lovely transitions?
I believe this multi-color stroke technique has a lot to do with the effectiveness of capturing light on an object, not to mention the shear efficiency of each stroke. Remember, the Impressionist painted quickly, putting down on canvas what he sees in the moment, before the light changes, or the subject moves away.
Someday, I hope I can become efficient, and effective, but for now it is just too cool that learning can be so much fun.
Nell took off, making two pristine tracks in the snow with the Blazer, meaning I suppose that the snow is lower than the four-wheel-drive's undercarriage; less than a foot?
Still a lot of much needed precipitation.
Sincerely,
Brian Rodgers
-- Visit the forum at: http://outfitnm.com/forum/ Read the BMN online at: http://outfitnm.com/category/brians-morning-newsletter Oh yeah, I turned the comments back on at http://outfitnm.com
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