Twilight

Here is the finished study of the farm. I spent numerous nights painting the scene from life, and one of those nights the sky looked incredible. At the time I wasn't sure (and I am still unsure) if I wanted such an active sky in the final piece, but still I couldn't resist painting it. The study shows the sky on that night, and I've adjusted it (and a few other things) in the value study. Let me know what you think. Also, I'm not sure if I am going to keep the title because I don't want any relation to those books/movies.

Twilight

15.5" x 30"

Drawings!

Lately I've been getting back into charcoal drawing and I'm really enjoying it. At first I was using it as part of the process of creating a painting, but the drawings had enough of their own energy to stand alone. I am experimenting a lot with my charcoal technique, but here are the first two drawings.

There are some drawing issues in the face, but it was a decent first attempt.

Progress!

I've been working diligently on this painting and I feel like it's getting close to finished. I'm really enjoying the way I'm applying/scraping/destroying the paint and I want this history to show in the final product. I'm finding that what's tricky about this process is that I need a good balance of refinement and looseness or the painting starts to look like crap. Ultimately, I need to refine a few things and then screw up other things and I think the painting will be finished. At least that's what I hope.

Progress and Looseness

I have been feeling the itch to loosen up for a couple of months. My work is not usually as tight as it has been, but I felt the need to push myself in a more realistic direction. I'm having a lot of fun now that I've loosened up and I feel like I should have been painting this way all along. The difficult thing I'm experiencing now is how to know when my paintings are done. I don't feel like either of these are finished yet, so I'll probably paint until I get sick of them and then call them finished.

 I had some more compositional issues with this piece. Here is the block-in before I was going to build the smaller canvas. At this stage I still wasn't happy with the composition so I made everything a little bigger.

Here is the result (with a bit of work added) but I am finally content with the composition. The previous iteration didn't have the impact or power I wanted to convey, but I found that making everything fill out the canvas more did the trick. It also meant that I didn't have to build another canvas, which is a win all the way around.

 I put this guy on the back-burner for a while. This is what it looks like 3 sittings after it's first post. I worked on it a couple of months ago when I was trying to get it ready for my solo show but (luckily) wasn't able to finish it. The painting at that stage - which I unfortunately didn't document - was really stiff and didn't have the energy that was so nice in the early stage of the piece, so yesterday I pulled it out again and got wild with it. Now I'm starting to have fun with it again.

Website!

I have been putting it off for years, but I finally created a website. It is really simple and isn't 100% finished yet, but I'm happy with its overall look. Also, it was dead easy to make using iWeb and updating it should be very quick (I don't know the ins and outs of web design, nor do I like sitting in front of my computer for long periods of time). Without further ado, my new website:

www.danielkrobbins.com

Let me know if you have any comments or questions.

Composition Issues

Here is some process work for a new painting. I posted a preliminary drawing for this painting about 3 or 4 years ago and I've finally gotten around to working on finalizing the composition, colors, etc. It took about 3 weeks for me to finish the drawing and compose it to my liking. I then painted the color study from life, and while doing so I realized there were compositional problems. I spent another week editing the composition, built the canvas (35"x45"), and transferred the composition.

  

After getting the painting to this stage, I once again realized that I wasn't 100% satisfied with the composition. Annoying. But with the magic of a digital camera and Photoshop, I edited the composition to reduce the amount of space on the right side of the painting to finalize the composition once again. I have learned to listen to that little nagging voice in my head (and listen quickly), or I will never be completely satisfied with the piece.

This is what the painting looks like now (it's a mess, I know). When I get around to it I will build the new panel, strip the painting from it's current panel, and stretch it around the new panel. I only took off an inch and a half - it isn't much out of 45 inches - but I have the tendency to be anally-retentive with my compositions.

Farm composition

This is the composition for a new piece I am getting ready to start. I might still tweak this a little, but I am mostly satisfied with it. In this scene the sun had just set behind the trees next to the house, and the porch light of the house had just been turned on; there was something quiet and beautiful that begged to be painted.