Color is the Key

Yellow is the whole point. The image is about yellow. It has no other impetus other than the question about how can I use yellow and what colors can I introduce into a collection of yellow shades to maximize the yellowness of yellow. It could be a tribute to all things yellow: butter, buttercups, dandelions, certain squashes, lemons, marigolds, daisies, canaries, the sun, the leaves of the gingko in autumn.

And this little collage was just the first foray into yellow. A person could certainly pick up the yellow theme again and again in many different ways. And when even the thought of so-doing is delightful, how delightful is the actual venture likely to be? Very delightful.

As delightful as sitting in the light on a lovely, pleasant, sunny day.

living room

Fantabulous Koi

Flower Wall (Birds and Flowers), acrylic 48 inches square, in a lovely setting

I place my paintings in beautiful settings through the magic of photographic editing, getting them ready for their natural migration into other settings far beyond the studio. Paintings are ideas — they are ideas about how the world looks. And ideas have their own migrations. Like the migrations of birds or butterflies, ideas like to fly. They move when they are ready.

Until that apt moment, it’s fun to imagine the future places where the pictures will live — once they are released into the wild — into the wide world. Their internet travels are just one fluttering of wings.

Perhaps we learned to think of art as inhabiting museums. Museums are wonderful. But most art lives somewhere else. The great art of the past lives on museum walls, but much of the wonderful art of our…

View original post 141 more words

Monet on my mind

Fantabulous Koi

experimental image for learning complex technique using acrylic

Willie Nelson had Georgia on his mind. Monet has been on mine. The image above is a further development of the image I posted yesterday. I added more color, more lines, all rather capriciously — though with yet a bit of method to my madness. After I had made these additions rather randomly, I began recognizing that some of the effects resemble passages in Monet paintings when their surfaces are seen very close. That realization in turn caused me to think that these lively marks might be the next technique I need to use in order to have my Meadow come alive. (I have a large meadow painting in the works.)

These were good discoveries because, as so often happens, while trying out these new-to-me methods I began wondering if my efforts were too much of just “fiddling around.” I spent a…

View original post 110 more words

Fun things happening at Trace Elements

If you enjoyed my old blog, you’ll like the new blog even BETTER. Come visit the new and improved posts at Trace Elements. The link is HERE.

More art, more life and more whimsy — all of it illustrated with pictures.

Metaphors behind everything

Fantabulous Koi

bowl of fruit, neocolor crayons

Each day of late I have been drawing fruit in bowls or in the compotier, beginning drawing early in the day, then continuing drawing late at night. I reflexively follow the contours of the fruits, but I could — and should — generalize them more. If I want to be a good student of Cezanne, that’s definitely what I ought to do.

bowl of fruit, neocolor crayons

The more generalized they are, the more they are like other things — though I suspect that their metaphor potential doesn’t need to be stressed particularly since, if it’s present, it’s already hard-wired into the brain. Why do we like fruit, apart from its flavors and nutrition? How did fruits figure in so many myths? The subject has a certain je ne sais quoi from the get-go.

study for Flower Wall

For me the fruits are visually most…

View original post 54 more words

Art lovers, follow me! (You’ll be glad you did.)

Fantabulous Koi

Trace Elements Blog (also know by its URL, fantabulous koi) is just getting revved up. It will explore so many art topics. You’ll be amazed. And you can be amazed even faster by commenting and offering your ideas. The world of art is huge. So many things to explore, and I intend to explore as much of that realm here as I can. Come join me.

View original post

Nose on the glass

Fantabulous Koi

bowl of fruit, study

Look closely at things. Put your nose right up to the window-glass of reality and peer very intensely at everything. One of the great benefits of art is that it lets you rev up your perception to Level 11 and there are no adverse side effects. You are only using bits of time. However, looking closely at reality is time well spent. Reality is here for a reason. It deserves our appreciation.

Seek to be, as Henry James put it, “someone on whom nothing is lost.”

drawing close up

View original post

Shifting Gears

Just a reminder that I’m using this blog much less now (doing a few reblogs and redirects from time to time) and am shifting my attention to a new blog Trace Elements. Come see what’s going on at the new blog, which you can find HERE.

Being Bold

Fantabulous Koi

Meadow & Sky, notebook drawing

Delacroix advised artists to be bold. He felt that most artists are not bold enough. He was also the champion of the small, quick idea made in a rapid sketch. I find that when I want to do something new, it helps greatly to “talk” the idea through to myself in small drawings. I think of the drawings as little experiments. One feels a readiness to experiment when the stakes are small — literally. The above drawing, for instance, was an experiment in radical simplicity. In my imagination the drawing above could even be large. You can pretend. Never lose that childhood skill: Nature gave it to you for a reason. Draw on the cave wall as did the primordial humans: start with the cave wall of your mind.

Mountainous Scene, notebook drawing

You can imagine the gesture that you make with a pencil being…

View original post 53 more words

Fun Stuff & Bits of Musing

Fantabulous Koi

Fun things are happening and will be happening at my new Trace Elements blog. Come and join in the whimsy.

View original post