Kevangogh's Photography & Painting Blog
Just a place to hang my stuff!
This is my fourth landscape within the last month. The view is off of the road going to the Iwaki Flower Center. I did something different this time, that being, I took a pair of +3.0 reading glasses and painted it wearing those. This blurred my vision of course but it helped me to simplify shapes and colors and I was happy with this new technique. That, combined with the umbrella is giving me much brighter, not so overly dark colors.
There is a place nearby where I live called the Flower Center. Well, outside of it being a very beautiful place, there is a very old temple nearby. I’m not really sure how old it is, but it must be hundreds of years old. I went up to it and I was the only one there. The trees in the background were the hardest part, I don’t think I pulled this one off. Actually, I went there twice and the second was better, but I need to try it again one more time.
Uh, this is really super simple, but you can’t believe how much this stupid stick has helped me in the field. Trying to manage holding 6 brushes in-between my fingers while painting, getting paint all over my hands, something needed to be done! So I looked online to see what other’s had done, most solutions where some sort of hanging box. That didn’t seem satisfactory to me for some reason, so somehow I came up with this and I really like it!
Okay, if you look at a previous post, I used a white Utrecht umbrella which they don’t even make anymore. Did a painting using that and it turned out way too dark. Reason being, if you judge colors under harsh bright light then your painting will end up looking good only when it has harsh bright light shining on it. So I had been looking at this new umbrella called “BestBrella” or something like that and finally ordered one. It arrived a few days ago and I have to say, this is one slick umbrella! Since it will provide a lot more shade, this should help lighten up my paintings a bit. Here’s a pic of it hooded up to my 8 x 10 Open M pochade box…
Been spending some time getting my gear back up to speed. Took the French easel out last week and did a F3 canvas of rice fields in harvest. That thing is heavy and requires constant maintenance so now I’m thinking it’s time to break out the pochade box. Unfortunately, the 8 x 10 inch canvas size of that pochade box fits no frames here in Japan at all, so now looking to purchase a new box that will work over here. In the meantime, I’ll stick to the French easel.
