Dealing with Symmetry 101

"Un Pecho de Aguacate" is a 4x5 inch oil on canvas -- $30 -- is a study of symmetry. Had these been two identically shaped avocados, then I would have had to do something different. But two elements are at work here to make this composition work with moderate success. The first is the combined teardrop shapes of the fruit remind the viewer of other shapes such as two balloons tied to a wall or taped to a birthday table or even shapes from the human body.

The second element is the slight curvature of one of the fruits neck toward the other helps create a circular movement. This in turn with the irregular curves of the fruit moving out and around, helps the viewer's eye move from the top, around the bottoms of the fruit, up the leftside and back across the top of the two fruits – that was the intent and I'm sure people will debate its success or not.

To see more of my work or to contact me, go to http://www.avonwaters.com/

Controlling color by mixing

This 5x5 inch oil on canvas, "Red Tomato" is a good example of modern still life. When I lived in San Francisco in the early 1990s, I had the opportunity to see a Wayne Theibold retrospective show. Theibold made the modern still life famous with his use of contracting color and complementary color in reflected highlights along with the impasto or heavy application of paint.

This painting has the blue background laid in with a palette knife. I've controlled the contrast and center of interest by controlling the purity of color. By mixing white and a touch of yellow and violet with the background, the color becomes muted just enough so that the pure shades of red right out of the tube contrast very distinctly with the background.

You will see many food still lifes on the internet and in contemporary shows. This is Theibold's legacy – taking the simple object and placing it in a field of color.

To see more of my work see www.avonwaters.com

What size painting do I need?

This oil on canvas, "Onion braid" is on a 2x3 inch canvas. This is the smallest size I've ever painted. Because it is on canvas and not on a flat panel, the detail must be impressionistic – there's just too much texture from the canvas to do much detail that other styles of painting might allow in such small sizes.

As an artist, I pick the size of a canvas by the style in which I want to paint and by the shape of the composition that I might be painting. By that I mean I might be looking at a subject and seeing it would look good on a strong horizontal or vertical, so I pick a canvas I have on hand that would fit the vision I have for a subject. As for the style. I like to paint more abstractly on canvases 16x20 and impressionistic on canvases smaller. For me, the larger canvases offer a chance to explore the intersection of planes of different color and use broad strokes. If I were to make impressionistic paintings that large, then I would have to create the image using many small strokes – much too tedious for my tastes.

As for what size is right for someone buying a painting; I think any size is right. It's a matter of what space you have to fill. Small paintings in narrow spaces between doors and walls or windows are great, especially if stacked on top of one another. Larger paintings can become centerpieces in walls over larger furniture. Almost anything goes now days – just watch the TV shows. You see small New York apartments with the walls covered almost solid with photographs and art of all sizes. It used to be that a painting was thought to have to be hung centered on a wall with no pictures above, below or beside it. That's pretty much out the window now days.

Which is better: painting outside or in studio

This 9x12 oil on canvas was painted from a photograph in the studio. "Rocky Run" is a creek that only runs full when there has been a heavy rain. It goes deep into the woods of the Mississenwa Recreation Area in Indiana and starts as a dry limestone rock bed. Few streams in this flat part of Indiana have the ruggedness to look like a Montana fly fishing stream. I have been out to the stream three times this year after a rain to see if there was any water in it and not until one day this fall did it have enough water to make it interesting.

Usually I paint in Plein Air on location but sometimes I will paint from a photograph such as this painting. Is one better than the other? Each has its advantages and disadvantages. In this case, the weekend was rainy and wet and I wanted to paint a landscape, so painting from a photograph became an option. In the studio, a painting can also be developed more slowly and "fiddled with" over the course of several weeks, months or even years for some artists. Although this one was done in a few hours, I had the option of coming back to it.

Working outside, you must work quicker and record the light and color that is fleeting. It is harder in this respect and the brush strokes are usually looser outside due to the speed of the process. Some people say Plein Air paintings appear unfinished. But outside, some say the colors are brighter and fresher. The shadows also don't appear in finished works as dark as they can sometimes when a painting is from a photograph. Bottom line is, if you like the painting – it really doesn't matter if it was painted from a photo or from life.

It's rained so much that I haven't had enough light to photography the small still lifes I painted last week, so be patient – this week will be light on the number of postings. See my other paintings at www.avonwaters.com.

Still life: a way to study color

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"An apple for the teacher" is a 5x5 oil on canvas. Another still life and in the same vein as the last – or at least near the kitchen.

This is a study on complementary color. The background has a tinge of green. As I said in the last post, still life can give an artist the chance to experiment and study objects or in the case color combinations. By mixing a green the challenge is to make the green recede away from the red apple. Because red and green are opposites, if the color of the green is not toned down or grayed, then the two colors will visually vibrate. While this can be a fun effect, in this application it would make the focus the vibration and not the object of the painting – the apple.

Another basic principal is that warm colors come forward and cool colors recede. In this case the yellow-green is the warm color and under some circumstances it could come forward and make the apple appear as though it were in a cut-out hole within the space. Again, the challenge was to use color in an unconventional way.

To see more of my work see www.avonwaters.com.

Still life: an artist's option when the sun goes down

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"Morning Coffee" is a 3x7 inch oil on canvas. Due to the season and the short days, there isn't enough daylight to do much painting outside during the week once I get home. It has been years since I painted still lifes. My love of still life developed when I lived in the San Francisco Bay area in the early 1990s. I met many California artists and visited a retrospective show of Wayne Theibold whose still lifes used bright color and complementary color highlights. All used still life among their many other subjects. For me, still life is a pleasant break from my favorite subject -- landscapes. But still life is a great way to also hone the skills of shadow and refection.

The California colors, lavenders and yellows are hinted in this small canvas. This cup and saucer were unusual because the saucer was so much deeper than most; it allowed for the reflections and shadows to have more shape.



Still life has been a staple of many artists for centuries. The Dutch, about 400 years ago took still life to the limits with minute details and their recording of reflections – almost mirror like reflections in fruit and glass.

To see more of my work see www.avonwaters.com

Using Expressive Color

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"Dead Trees Standing" is a 20x24 oil on canvas painted in the Indiana Mississenwa State Recreation area. This scene caught my eye several times this fall but the light wasn't right for the vision I had. After the leaves all fell, the orange yellow and red leaves on the ground reflected back into the trees and gave them a distinctive redish cast. The grassy field in the foreground reflected a pale yellow light. In the grassy plain were dead trees with grey-blue trunks denuded of bark. They were trees that drowned about three years ago after beavers built a dam and flooded the area.

The colors are exaggerated. Artists must make decisions on every painting they do. Most of the landscapes in Indiana wooded areas have little color after the leaves fall. The reality is, the colors are there and one of the decisions an artist must make is to paint to scene and its colors as they are, or does the artist make other decisions.

It has always been my opinions that if you want to recreate the colors in the original scene, use a camera. Although there is a certain skill need to do realism or a painting that looks like a photo as is done in photo realism, there is also a skill to use any style of art such as impressionism, abstraction or expressionism. I merely have chosen to use abstract expressionistic techniques to exaggerate colors to create emotional response from the viewer.

Color is exciting. And as an artist, when I combine certain colors such as reds, oranges and yellows – the painting takes on a different life than it would if I merely recorded what I saw. Artists usually change what they see, no matter what style they use. Many will eliminate the number of trees, or cars on the street, or cut things out so there is a focal point – it's all part of the development of a composition that will interest the viewer.

Checkout my other paintings at www.avonwaters.com

How did the "Daily painting" movement begin?

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6x8 oil on masonite, "Cloud study."
About three years ago 15 artists began meeting on the internet and pledged to discipline themselves to paint at least five of the seven days a week (there were other artists before this that painted daily). As you can imagine, it doesn't take long before the paintings began piling up and some began marketing their work to family and friend -- and then on eBay auctions. The paintings are usually small such as this study. I paint about three a week; others paint daily, weekly, monthly or at some interval.

By setting a goal of painting at some interval, the artists and I are accountable to one another and themselves. Because they are small, the cost of the paintings is low. As a result, what started out as an exercise in discipline now has become the "Daily Painting" movement as people began buying up almost every painting the artists create. Prices are as low as a few dollars but most of the daily paintings sell for $100 and less.

Many paint only small daily works, others are like me and paint larger gallery sizes. To see more of my work go to http://www.avonwaters.com/.

What Shape Canvas is needed

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This 4x5 inch oil on canvas was done on my lap sitting by a stream on a gray day. The stream feeds into the Mississenwa River in Indiana. The gray day muted the colors and deadened the highlights in the deep woods. The orange comes from the fresh bed of leaves on the ground -- the rains had not yet turned them into a black tea.

The shape of a canvas is mostly determined by what I'm comfortable painting on. Some artists prefer square canvases over rectangles, and some have an affinity for long or narrow canvases. Not always, but usually I will pick sizes that are considered traditional or ready-made. This is because the frames for these are substantially cheaper. Ready-made frames can be half the price of a custom frame.

With that said, it is important to remember that an artist usually will pick a canvas shape that fits the subject. As an artist, if I try to make a scene fit the canvas rather than use a canvas with proportions that fit the scene, then I'm generally not as happy with the end results.
Like many artists, I carry with me two "L" shaped pieces of cardboard. On each leg of the cardboard I have marked various sizes in inches. When I put the two "L"s together to form a frame, I can slide them to the marks to match the proportions of the canvas I am using. Then I can look through this cardboard frame at my scene and eliminate all the things I don't want in the picture. For years artists have used their index fingers and thumbs of both hands to create a frame or taken paper and cardboard frames into the field with them to aid in fitting what they are painting onto the canvas

How do artists decide what size to paint?

This paintinting is available for sale on my gallery website, click here.

This 20x24 oil on canvas was inspired by gunfire. I've been painting deep in the woods but chose to stay in the open field because of all the deer hunters and shots ringing out around me. Besides, I don’t look good in orange and my easel sticks up in the air and might just look like antlers. For many painters painting out of doors or in Plein air, this is a large canvas size.

The size of canvas an artist uses can be determined by a number of reasons. Usually I'll carry with me a variety of sizes of canvas from 5x5 inches on up and my enthusiasum for the subject will dictate the size. If I feel like I want to do a quick study, I'll use a small canvas. But painter style will often dictate a need for a larger canvas and in this case, that is what happened.

I have two styles I like to paint in; impressionistic where the paint is thick (impasto) and lights and darks are depicted in broad strokes separate brush strokes – and often very loose. But sometimes I like to interpret subjects using expressionistic color – expressing he scene in exaggerated or unusual color and using space and planes or shapes of planes to create depth. And that was what I wanted here. The corn field only needed a few strokes to simulate the picked rows. More would have distracted from the vertical motion of the bare trees and the oak that still clung to its leaves. Too much detail would kill the effect I was after.

Unfortunately but true, sometimes the size is dictated solely by what the artist has on hand. I've painted a number of pictures on a certain size because that was the canvas on sale or there was an old painting I wanted to get rid of by painting over it.

Galleries serve a positive purpose too

This 6x8 inch oil on masonite, "Dead End Road" was inspired by the irony of it being almost the end of fall. It was a cold day and I had to wear gloves. Maybe that is why the brush work here is looser than in most. This painting is on an eBay auction for 7 days, click here to place a bid.

Maybe I’ve given the impression that I have great distain for galleries and gallery goers; not true. The majority of gallery goers are well informed, well educated and know their art. Unfortunately, while visiting gallery shows to write show critiques, I ran in to a number of visitors that, although they were well educated, it was obvious that they were using what they knew to intimidate others or to impress friends they brought along with them for the evening.

One of the purposes of this blog is to eliminate the intimidation people feel about art. How and why people feel intimidated varies, but I’m guessing that some of the intimidation comes from not being able to “speak the language.” The fact is, you don’t have to speak the language, but I hope over time my readers will get enough facts and gain the confidence to enter a gallery and be comfortable saying why they like something or don’t like something.

Galleries serve another purpose for artists. They provide a sales outlet. But it is the gallery that decides what is worthy of being shown and what doesn’t deserve to be shown. The artists pay dearly to be part of a gallery, giving back 50 to 60 percent of the sale price and in many cases paying the shipping and insurance both ways for the show. It does free the artist’s time to do more work because some, not all, of the marketing is placed in someone else’s hands. The Internet is changing who gets to decide what should be seen by others and what should not. Anyone can post anything – no matter what their skill level. Buyers now must either rely on the gallery owners to pre screen art or they must gain a little knowledge themselves. But remember, if you decide to ever visit a gallery, don’t use your knowledge to intimidate others – or I’ll call you a gallery hound too.

Ideas about where to find artists to talk to

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If you like art but don't go to galleries, you need to read on – this blog is for you.

In the last entry I mentioned talking to artists to not only learn more about the creative process, but as a great way to educate yourself on art. As I said, most artists love to talk about their work. Many prefer to talk to the new collector or the person who is trying to learn about art, more so than the gallery hound (that's the person who comes up to an artist at an opening and starts spouting off art jargon or dropping names of art movements and styles).

So where can you find artists to talk to without having to go to galleries? There are several ways that are very non-threatening. The first is the easiest, go to an art festival or an arts and crafts show. The next easiest way is to do a search for what called a "paint-out" – more on this later, but this is where artists interested in painting outdoors are invited to a town or location. They paint all day and show their work off at the end of the day, usually in a public place. The next way is to look for something called an "Open Studio" tour. I have participated in open studios and they really do offer a chance to talk to the artists and ask questions about specific works and how they were created.

Studio tours are great – more on this later too. Usually these are in areas where several artists have studios and they open their studios up so the general public can tour their workplaces. As this blog progresses I'll talk more about these opportunities and events.

The work featured today was inspired by the bright color of the huge pile of corn. The bright colors of fall were dull in comparison to the corn. As an artist, finding the unexpected among the usual often creates surprise, as in this case.

The artist's creation process

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Not all art is created equal. By that I mean, every artist starts out to create an image, or vision, that they have in their head. But what ends up on the canvas each time doesn't always match the image. Sometimes the outcome is better than expected and sometimes it is less than expected. While it is true that some artists don't have a preconceived idea and like to let things happen, many like myself preconceive the outcome, whether consciously or subconsciously.

Many people who like art and buy art, often say they admire the creation process that the artist goes through.

To learn more about art and the creation process I mentioned, don't be afraid to talk to the artists. Most enjoy talking about what they do. By asking questions you can learn how artists go about picking a subject, the colors and style they use.
This work was inspired by contrasts much as the last one was. But in this case, it was the row of nearly bare trees out in the open against the sky. These were small Sycamore

Fall birch

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You don't have to be able to put into words why you like something. Leave that to the gallery folks or the critic who writes a piece for the local newspaper. All you have to do is know that when you see something, you like it.

Chances are, it's the color, subject or the way the artist has composed the visual elements that attract you to a visual piece. Later on in this blog I'll discuss some of those things as I post my pictures. But for now, all you have to do is to be ready to react to something and recognize that you have had a reaction.

Now that sounds strange, but there are some people that are so conditioned by others' reactions or by the so called art education of what art is, that they subconsciously shrink back from their own reactions and adopt the reactions they learn from others.

The inspiration for this painting was the contrast of the trees. Not just the color, but the type of trees and how they grow. This birch tree not only had contrasting leaves, but birch branches point down. This constrasts with the maples that around this tree with branches that grow pointing up. The other contrast is the blue-gray bark of the birch and the dark bark of the maples.

Off Road trail into the woods

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So you like art but say you don't know anything about it. This blog is for you.

You only have to know one thing, do you like what you see? If so, then that is all you really have to know to enjoy art. What is good art to one person isn't necessarily what is good art to the next – otherwise all the artists would find out what "art is" and would be doing the same thing and the same painting year after year. And it's because they are not doing the same thing, that makes art and ones taste for a painting very subjective.
You don't have to be part of the wine and cheese crowd that visits galleries to enjoy art or even be a gallery hopper to talk about it. In my opinion, that crowd does a disservice to art by intimidating others who can't look at an artist work and talk in the terms they use.

Today's painting is simple. It's a response I had to the half mile hike into the woods after following the tracks 4x4 off roaders made illegally into the woods in the Mississenwa Reservoir. This 6x8 inch oil on masonite is a quick study of the end of the trail where the tracks when up a hil and curved to end at a fallen tree just out of sight of this view.

Trio on the hill

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These three oaks stood separated from the other trees not only physically, but chromatically. This 6x8 inch oil on masonite was done just before the leaves on most of the other trees in the Mississenwa State Park in Indiana changed color. This has been a very strange year. usually by the middle of October all of the leaves have fallen off, but not this year.

Santa Fe church

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I found this church in New Santa Fe, Indiana and its shape reminded me of buildings in Santa Fe, NM. This is a 6x8 oil on masonite.

Red tree on a curve

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The trees at the edges of the deep woods still have their leaves. The ones in the center of the woods are almost devoid of their leaves.

This painting is in an eBay auction.

This shelter house at the Mississenwa State Recreation area in Indiana was dwarfed by the large hardwoods that surrounded it.

See more of my work at www.avonwaters.com

Nature's bagpipes

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This clump of trees along the Mississenwa River in Indiana was so uniform that it appeared almost artificial.

To see more of my work go to http://www.avonwaters.com/

Yellow tree at the Mississenwa State Park

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Driving around the Indiana Mississenwa State Recreation Area, I came across this brightly colored tree against a backdrop of darker trees. It really stood out. The actual painting has more yellow in it than this photograph.

To see more of my work go to http://www.avonwaters.com/

This painting is for sale on eBay.

The spire makes this church stand out among all of the trees in a little small Indiana town. This is a 6x8 inch oil painting on a masonite panel.

To see more of my work go to www.avonwaters.com

Missinewa River in the morning

6x8 oil on masonite. The light shining off the river attracted me to this scene. You can bid on this picture on eBay.

Sprawling chestnut tree

The chestnut tree outside of my studio sprawls acrosss the fence. It looks wind blown because the top was blown out of it last year.

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This 5x7 oil on masonite was inspired by a Mexican bowl I had on the shelf.

See www.avonwaters.com for my larger works.

Green Pear

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Pears aren't ripe yet. This is a green hard one I took from our tree. It's an oil on masonite. The colors are a little more vivid than this reproduction.

Fallen trees

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This 5x7 oil on canvas is deep in a woods at the Mississinewa State Recreation area. To see more of my work see http://www.avonwaters.com/.

Barn on 800 South

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Amega farmers bought up smaller farms in Indiana, only the barns stand on some farms. The old barns are disappearing fast.This one is up the road from my studio.

To see more of my work go to my webpage, http://www.avonwaters.com/

The Road Sign

Road 950 East

This painting is for sale on eBay

This little 5x7 on canvas was done up the road from where my studio is in rural Indiana. It's a plein air work that reflects a subtle part of rural life -- the roads and fields all look the same and people look for the crooked or bent road sign to know where their turn is. Or at night, it's only the reflection of the green road sign that tells them their turn is coming up along a solid wall of corn.

To see more of my work visit my website www.avonwaters.com

This 9x12 oil on canvas was done at the Mississenwa Reservoir, Summerset, Ind. It's much more traditional than my larger canvases. I tend to be more of the traditional impressionist with canvases that are under 16x20 in size. I am much more of an abastact impressionist with my use of color. But some of my use of color is very evident in the dark shadows.

The woodlands were deep and dark, but this old picket fence lead off toward an open area where the sun was very bright. To see more of my work go to my website, www.avonwaters.com