Friday, September 19, 2008

Nocturne...A Splash of Light

"Santa Ynez Nocturne"
9" X 12"

This nocturne was painted for the purpose of 1) having fun with another, and 2) wanting to practise adding a splash of highlight in the otherwise usual dark nocturne. Well, I guess it makes sense...you must first learn to paint the night and then comes the part of starting to have fun with it. Adding visual interests...spicing it up...making it pop...adjusting the mood or light. Soon I'll start to play more with color in the sky.

a detail....
I am starting to do grasses better I think. Grasses are funny, my best grasses seem to be when I am almost just throwing the paint on there with a knive stroking vertically. After that I just sweep up in short strokes with a fan....scumble in some dirt patches again with a knife. It seems the more haphazard I do them the better they look. If I approach them with some sort of planned pattern or concerted effort they suck and in the end I go back to my "could care less" sort of method and BAM! Good looking grass. I've seen some artists who do grasses so lifelike it is amazing! I'd love to learn that method but it looks like it is done in that preplanned method and feels like a ton of dissapointment coming on, hahaha. I'll stick with my careless method for now. It has a more impressionist and painterly feel to it anyway.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow! Loving this nocturne, Ron! The sky is wondrous, the darkness of the trees I find both creepy, yet alluring. The highlights in the foregound pop the whole painting. Great work.

Ron Guthrie said...

Thanks Alexandre,
These nocturnes are so fun to do. Experimenting with light and shadow, loss of color...lost of fun stuff to work on.
I really can see why Whistler delved into nocturnes after doing a few of them myself. It is easy to get hooked on painting them.
Ron