Wednesday, July 22, 2015

8:30 Monday Morning


8:30 Monday Morning
Nancy Herman
6" x 8"
oil on canvas board

This guy, waiting for a ride with his lunch in his hand looks ready for the week ahead.  

$150.00

Monday, July 20, 2015

CAUGHT ON THE CORNER #2


CAUGHT ON THE CORNER #2
Nancy Herman
9" x 12"
oil on canvas board

Caught in the hard edges of today's world these two men find companionship on the corner.

$250.00



Thursday, July 16, 2015

FRIDAY FIVE O'CLOCK

The next in this series about people as part of the environment, caught as it were in the angles of the here and now.  The great rush at five to escape work and get home.


FRIDAY FIVE O'CLOCK
Nancy Herman
6" x 8"
oil on canvas board

$150.00



Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Caught on the Corner

While I try to find a way to make or find a kind of reverse stencil to create soft patterns in water color, I return to oil paint with a renewed appreciation of its properties.  Oh how thick and forgiving it is!

For a while I have been contemplating the way people are attached to their environment.  The time and place we live forms us in so many ways.  I have been dealing with this idea in each painting that includes people but have decided to push it a bit further.  Can I say this in a few simple shapes, carefully choosing the color to enhance the feeling of place and time?

Many times when cruising along the streets in Google maps I come across 2 or three men or women standing on a corner talking.  I always wonder what brought them there.  Here is the first in a series of paintings about that.  I have made the paint very thick, almost like lacquer.



CAUGHT ON THE CORNER
Nancy Herman
9" x 12"
oil on canvas board

$250.00

Friday, July 10, 2015

more experiments

One more painting with individual wet spots before I spray the whole page with water.  For this one I created various flower like shapes with water and dropped in colors to see what would happen.  After it was semi dry I washed over the whole thing with water and when it was dry I added ink.


Now it is really time to spray the whole paper and see what happens when I add some drops of color.  It is really interesting to watch the colors run into each other but when they are dry it is not so interesting, so you never really know what you are going to end up with.   At least I don't yet.  With this one I added lots of colors willy nilly then wiped some of the color out with a crunched up paper towel.  I wish I had some sort of sponge that was cut into shapes so I could wipe out definite shapes.  I will have to make something to do that.  Here I simply added some brush strokes in different colors to see what kind of patterns I could create.  What I like best about these two paintings is the soft light that results from the over all wash. (Can't fit the whole page in my scanner)


So this time I sprayed the whole page and just kept dropping in colors, moving the paper around so as to make the colors run this way and that and did not use the brush at all.  This is definitely fun.  Is it art?








Thursday, July 9, 2015

More water color experiments

Since I am trying to find out what water color does I have decided to forget images, at least for a while, and just examine what happens when I play around with my new colors.

Every water color instructor suggests that it is important to be able to produce several distinct shades of color with ease.  So since I love squares  I decided to start with a simple symmetrical arrangement.  That keeps me calm and I notice the whole idea of water color has gotten me quite nervous.  I imagine it has something to do with being an old dog who is afraid of new tricks.

Here is my first square experiment.  I first wet each square and then added the color, thinking this would make an even coat of paint.  As you can see I was wrong about that.


I did manage to get at least 3 or 4 levels of color.

Next I decided to play in each square.  The first third of the squares I dropped a color into the center of the wet square, then went around it with another color and surrounded that with a third color.  This was fun to watch as the colors blended willy nilly.  The next third of the squares were solid, taking up one of the colors in the mix next to it.  In the third squares I blended 2 colors trying to bring the whole thing together somehow.

As you can see, although it has a certain cheery quality it really could use more of an overall compositional drive.  Some darks and lights would help.  I could do that but I think it has had enough of my meddling.


Tomorrow - no squares - wet the whole paper- yikes!