Prayers for His Voyage

I just added "Prayers for His Voyage" to the Small Works section of this blog. It represents God's strong protection through the prayers of a loving woman.

Prayers for His Voyage
Oil on linen • 6" x 6" • Sold

New Painting and Recent Award

Hello, everyone! This past weekend, I attended a life painting session at Starkweather Arts Center in Romeo, MI for the first time. It was a wonderfully refreshing time of observing and painting from life. I can't wait to go back! The head study I painted is shown below and has been added to my website. If you are interested in purchasing this work, please e-mail me at Contact@AdamClague.com.
 

Christine
Oil • 11" x 14"
Available • To inquire,
Contact the Clague Studio

Also, I am honored and blessed to be a Finalist in FASO's January BoldBrush Painting Competition with my painting Sunday Afternoon. Click here to see the full list of winners from January's contest.

Sunday Afternoon
Oil • 9" x 12"
SOLD

Painting Demo: Stage 11

Well, it's the moment you've all been waiting for... the final stage!!! Well... almost. Here's the deal: In an attempt to keep this demo concise, I have tried in each stage to simply cover as much canvas as possible. As a result, I have left many areas unfinished. If I continue daily posts showing the completion of each of these areas, I'm afraid this demo would become quite tedious. And I don't want to bore anyone! So you, my faithful bloggers, have my word that I, Adam Clague, will post the finished work once it is completed. Don't worry, it should only take another week or two before it's done. At that time, I'll make a final post with lots of detail shots showing each area I have reworked. For those of you who are Facebook friends, watch for my status announcement of the final final stage.

I hope you will forgive me for not having too much new to show you. I was limited to a half-day of painting, since the other half was spent tunneling through white mountains that dropped on us northern states yesterday evening. However, I did manage to paint some more books and resolve some issues with the background.

To everyone, a hearty "thank you!" for following this painting demonstration! I've had a great time, and I praise the Lord for how He has helped me with the painting. I hope you have enjoyed it too. As I mentioned before, be sure to check back in a week or two for the final installment. God bless!

Painting Demo: Stage 10

Making sure my perspective is right!

Welcome back, everyone! Thanks for taking time to stop by. Well, much of today was spent ensuring that my perspective is correct. Any time an artist is painting architecture or geometric objects, he must make sure that his perspective is accurate. Otherwise, his painting can have disproportionate scale or a feeling of unbalance. Unfortunately, I don't have time to write a detailed discussion on perspective, but I will give some basics. The artist must determine where his picture's horizon line is. The horizon line will always be at the level of the viewer's eyes. Mine is marked in the photo with a green line. The artist must remember that all horizontally level lines that are parallel to each other will appear to converge at the same point on the horizon line. This point is called the "vanishing point." The gray lines in the photo represent the edges of the desk and bookshelf, which all need to meet at the same vanishing point. I still have a few bugs to work out with my perspective, but it's getting there!

Top of bookshelf turning corner

Originally, I wanted the top of my bookshelf to turn a corner. I was hoping this would create a line that would lead the viewer's eye to the girl's head. Unfortunately, after I painted it this way, I decided it wouldn't work. Both angles of the corner turned out to be nearly horizontal, which looked confusing.














 

Top of bookshelf modified

So... I opted to keep the top of my bookshelf straight. I'll have to do some planning to figure out what I'm going to place behind the girl's head now. Maybe I'll just put more of the wall back there; we'll have to see! By the way, in case you're wondering, I'm painting the bookshelf and books from life. The bookshelf is actually a faux fireplace mantle my parents were storing in their attic. And since I'm on the topic, I also painted the apples from life yesterday, although I failed to mention it.

Full canvas at Stage 10

Here's the full image of my painting so far. I hope all of you are having as much fun as I am! Happy painting, everyone, and have a fabulous weekend. I hope to see you back on Monday the 21st for more brush-wielding!

Painting Demo: Stage 9

Wow, nine stages! I bet you thought I'd be done by now, didn't you? Thank you for your patience! Believe it or not, this painting has actually gone quite quickly and smoothly for me. I'm thankful for that! I am also grateful for all the kind comments people have made here and on Facebook, and for the new friends that have decided to follow this blog. Thank you!

Today I had some responsibilities besides painting, but was still able to finish Sydney's other hand as well as the apples. Tomorrow I'm planning to tackle the large unfinished area in the upper right (check Stage 8 to see a full shot of my painting). I'll need to rig up a still-life of sorts that will mimic the bookshelf I have planned for that area (See Stage 3).

I'm sorry this post is so short. Hopefully that novel I wrote last night can count for tonight too! Anyways, there is a very special young lady I want to call, so I must cut this short. See you back here tomorrow, Friday the 18th--same Bat-time, same Bat-channel!

Painting Demo: Stage 8

What a wonderful day of painting I had! Why was it so wonderful, you ask? Because I had fun! I don't really have too much to talk about though. Today I decided to park and work on Sydney's hand, arm and basket. The arm still needs a bit of work, but the hand and basket are finished (For now).

Brushwork

Since this image is basically a detail shot, I think I'll talk a bit about brushwork. Brushwork is important. And not. If the fundamentals of representational (realistic) art are listed in order of importance, brushwork comes in dead last: 1) Drawing, 2) Values, 3) Edges, 4) Temperature, 5) Color, 6) Brushwork. Yet, strong brushwork can sometimes make the difference between a mere technically-accurate rendering and a work of Art.

One key to having strong brushwork is variety: use brush strokes that are thick or thin, opaque or transparent, textured or smooth. Also, vary the direction of your strokes. Stroke both with and against forms. Make each square inch of your canvas alive with variety, so that it could stand alone as a beautiful abstraction. NEVER try to make your brushwork look like another artist's. You'll only frustrate yourself. Strive simply for accuracy and looseness, and above all... be yourself!

That being said... I wanted to be like some of my favorite artists who use Rosemary & Co. Series 278 and 279 long mongoose brushes, so I bought some for myself! They are wonderful, and I recommend them to any artist. They have a great "spring," allow a lot of reworking and have hairs that can be either splayed or shaped to a razor's edge. They are very similar to Royal Langnickel long mongoose brushes.

Want to paint more loosely? So did I, so I developed some "rules" that I disciplined myself to follow:
•Mix up plenty of paint. Nothing flattens a painting more than trying to spread too little paint.
•Never sit down.
•Back up after every stroke. And I mean back up at least eight feet. If a passage looks accurate from eight feet away, it's good--don't mess with it anymore! You should be constantly pacing back and forth
•If you are working from photos, angle your photos (or computer monitor) so that you have to back up at least eight feet to see both your source images and your canvas straight on.
•Hold your brush handle halfway back and use your whole arm when making strokes.

Keep following these rules until you see a change in your work. Then you can try sitting down or painting more strokes between each time you back up. If your painting tightens up again, go back to following the rules more strictly for a while. By the way, there's nothing wrong with painting tightly. Brushwork should be left to the preference of the artist (fundamentals 1 through 4, however, CANNOT be left up to preference).

Thanks again, everyone! Meet me back here tomorrow, Thursday the 17th for the next installment!

Painting Demo: Stage 7

I hope everyone had a marvelous Valentine's Day! For those of you that checked the blog for new material yesterday, I apologize. I took the day off to spend time with my wonderful girlfriend Andrea Orr. Today, I'd like to show the progress I've made on Sydney's head.

I started by massing-in the darkest values. When starting a new area of a painting, it's a good idea to establish your darkest values first (or the lightest ones). That way, you have a standard against which to gauge all the other values. You can then ask yourself, "how much lighter is this new value than my darkest value?" and so-on.

At this stage, you'll notice a lot of my strokes have sharp edges. These will get softened later. At this point, my priority is to establish a strong value pattern (arrangement of darks and lights). When painting a head, I remember the "egg principle": Just like an egg, one plane of the human head will be lighter than all the other planes. The lightest plane on any object will be the plane angled closest to a 90-degree angle to the light source. Usually, the lightest plane of the human head is the forehead. However, because of how Sydney is positioned in front of the window, the lightest values happen to occur on her cheeks. I like it, so I'm going to go for it!

And here's what I have so far. Not a finished head, but it's getting there! In the coming days I'll be working on the drawing of her mouth (I want to make her smiling a bit more) and on freshening up my brushwork. This may not happen tomorrow, in case you're wondering. We'll just have to see which area of the canvas I feel like painting in the morning!

Thanks for joining me again! I hope to see you back tomorrow, Wednesday the 16th for more!