Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Oil study #71

My good friend and art buddy Jan Weaver and I are painting almost every week together. She is responsible for me starting pastel in 2002. I met her at a life drawing session and she was painting portraits with pastels. I thought she was pretty good at it (she made it look so easy). Since then we've taken classes and workshops together. We also started painting in oil together.

We usually paint the same subject/setup at a different angle. We have different styles and learn from each other. Here's Jan's painting for today followed by mine.

Oil on canvas panel, 8 x 10"



Oil on panel , 6 x 8"

5 comments:

Regina Calton Burchett said...

Both of these are lovely - I especially like the colors in the bottom one - great combination, and the texture is so good on both of them!

Jo Castillo said...

Johanne, both of these are well done. Isn't it great to have a painting buddy? You learn something new every painting and can share in the fun.

Bob Barker said...

Thanks, Johanne and Jan - a feast for the eyes. What a great idea to do painting together. I would love to hear the critical art comments that go between you, but then that would spoil the fun for you, I'm sure.
You really have that orange colour perfect, Johanne. I like the detail of the stem and the shallow grooves emanating from them. Catchlights are great.

JohanneMorinFineArt said...

Thanks Regina, Jo and Bob. I appreciate your comments.

Our conversation (Jan and I) has evolved since January as the resulting paintings. There was a lot of frustrations initially for not knowing what to expect from the medium. We quickly learned to wait as long as possible before adding white to any color. The addition of white to a color makes it chalky and opaque. Once you add white (where you didn't mean to) it's nearly impossible (or I don't how yet) to go back to a nice and clean (and sometimes transparent dark) color.

More recently the conversation is around:
- how do I paint that?
- what color is that?
- oops!
- oh, no!
- keep it simple (that's me :)
-...
and hopefully soon it will change for something like:
- oh, I like that! :)

There are things we like better in each other paintings and we try to learn from that.

We often get a good laugh at how much we like some paintings few weeks later that we initially thought were awful.

"Painting" is a journey and it's nice to be able to share it with someone going through the same things.

Jan Weaver said...

The luminous color of your painting really impresses me. Mine looks dull and a little dirty. I did go back in and clean up the color some, but never got the colors you have. It's fun to see them together. Jan