Week four of my painting class…
I neglected to include some details of the artwork that I’m working from for my second attempt at painting in my on-going painting class. It is a 1921 piece by Bernhard Gutmann called Fish Houses, Monhegan.
As I continued working on this piece, right side up this time, I found myself getting very frustrated and I realized I’d made a mistake in selecting this painting to work from. It’s entirely too busy, too busy for my novice level and too busy for my taste level. I like large simple fields without a lot of detail or compositional elements. I guess that’s why I like the sky, the water and the building on the left. You might be asking what made me choose this one in the first place (for heaven’s sake). Well, I was drawn to the rough texture and loose detail, but I guess even loose detail is too much detail for me. Lesson learned.
So, there I was making a mess and getting confused when my instructor Maureen came over and turned it upside down again. This is to force me to just see shapes and not get caught up in detail. Here is what I ended up with by the end of class, upside down…
And right side up…a little more detail taking shape.
I will give this painting one more go at the next class and then I’ll move on to something simpler…I hope.
