The Derby. Acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24. Click on image to enlarge.

When you're a kid you just always assume things will always be as they are. As you get older, you realize that nothing is so constant as change. I have seen so many local landmarks disappear in my lifetime. I thought it might be nice to try to capture some of them before they too disappear. This is of course The Derby bar/restaurant on western Main Street in Poughkeepsie.

A second reason for doing this work is that I thought it would have an obvious potential buyer; the owner of The Derby. Who wouldn't want an original painting of their business, right?

The painting is extremely "tight", probably more than I like. That is to say I sacrificed some "painterly" quality and instead went for as much realism as I could achieve. If you compare this to the defunct drive-in, for example, you will see what I mean. This is also a good example of why doing landscapes is so much easier. I had to adhere pretty strictly to my photographic reference or this just wouldn't look correct.

I was pretty impressed with myself when I did this. Now, a couple of months on, I am not so impressed. I definitely want to loosen up next time. I used to be very impressed with hyper-realism and photo-realism. In these styles, a painting will have extremely sharp, photographic realism. I have (I think) matured to now believe that a simple photograph achieves this. What a painting does is depict something in a way that is not a photograph. It can incorporate elements that photographs fail to capture.

So the challenge now will be to depict realism but in a painterly manner.

Incidentally I have this weird thing where I get insomnia about once a week. I just don't get tired enough to fall asleep and I end up awake all night and into the next day. The Derby was done on one of those overnights. The higher realism takes a lot of time to do.

I might try to paint this again sometime.

Acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24. Click on image to enlarge.

I apologize for the tardy post. My treatments have made weekly posts impossible. Also I only have a few paintings left to show. I have not done any work since probably January. The treatments were too brutal for me to even consider doing more paintings. Feeling a little better now.

Anyway...I did this landscape entirely from imagination. This was really just to practice (again) landscape techniques. Because it's all just made up, a work like this can be done relatively quickly. That is one of the best advantages of doing nature paintings; it doesn't matter if a tree is a little too far to the left, or a cloud is a little too far to the right. I just put things wherever they look good. Contrast this to doing someone's portrait; if you put their nose a little too far to the left, it will definitely get noticed!

So it's just random nature elements. Compared to a lot of my other work, I am relatively satisfied with this. Of course, this is not a work that you will contemplate for hours, it's just something done for fun.

Acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24". Click on image to enlarge.

I did this landscape almost entirely from a photo from the internet. I wanted to practice some landscape techniques. The painting came out okay, but I thought it paled compared to the source photo. Well, that's why we practice; to try to get better, right? It's an image I would probably attempt again.

Incidentally, it's not really legal to copy someone else's image. It is acceptable to copy parts of it, or to combine parts of different images together, but the resulting work must be substantially different from the source image(s).

That said, art students have always outright copied the work of the great masters and others. What could be a better measure of your talent than to see if you could make an image just like a famous work? Obviously you can learn a lot by doing what the greats have done.

But again, this was done for practice, not for profit.

I did this around the beginning of 2016. Acrylic on canvas, 18x 24. I had high hopes for this surrealist piece. I must admit I am pretty dissatisfied with it. The background behind the bridge is weak. The legs and shoes could use way more definition. And I think the biggest problem is that the rear foot does not really appear to be stepping with any real weight; it does not have enough bend to have realism.

Oh well, at least is a good study for what to do differently next time.

Welcome to Art in the Hudson Valley!

 

I did this way back in 2012. It is acrylic on canvas, 18 x 24. I used my own photo of a defunct drive-in movie theater in Maryland as reference. This was a great chance to practice landscape elements. I like the subject matter: A remnant of what was probably a fun place for many, passed by, no longer relevant. Just a relic of a different time, soon to be taken back by nature. I like the general looseness of technique. I am pleased by this painting overall.