Category: Process
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Imagine creating a piece of art that resulted from an interpretation of a coffee stain? The trick may be to use good quality coffee. Last night I attended a meeting of the Oshawa Art Association in which artist and animator Lisa Whittick (click here) spoke about her methodology behind these coffee drawings? paintings? At first…
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One of the first things I was taught as an oil painter is that you never place thin over the thick. In other words, if you are using turps to thin your paints, don’t put them atop a layer of paint that was used directly out the tube. The reason is simple: the net result…
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Here we go again. As part of my path towards a formal self-portrait, here is my second study. I’m still debating whether or not it is done. Depending on the light in which I view it, it either looks exactly like me, or like me in about another twenty years. In this study I wanted…
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The most common beginner mistake made by new oil painters is to think they can start at one side of the painting and simply work across and finish at the other. There are some materials where there is little choice but to do that — such as an artist doing a proper fresco and having…
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Last month I had the annual visit with my optometrist and somehow the discussion turned to art (it often does with me anyway). I had said to her that I wondered how my vision issues are or will manifest themselves in my painting? At this point I do have the start of cataracts, but we’re…
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It’s interesting to watch artists at work on a portrait commission. For starters, its never about taking a photo then replicating that photo. The best appear to make it a process about getting to know the person, then making multiple sketches and some preparatory paintings before tackling the main commission. Artists speak about getting to…
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There was a time when Lunenburg looked like what you would expect of a town of 2,300 permanent residents. Not a lot. The first time I visited was in the off season, and frankly, there wasn’t much there for casual visitors beyond the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic and perhaps walking around to view the…
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I’m probably pigeon-holed as a landscape painter. But in the past two years I have made an effort to stray outside my comfort zone by taking on some new genres, or at the very least to explore genres I haven’t visited in a long time (eg. portraiture). I calculated it would aid the effort to…
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What’s the point of making art if nobody ever looks at it? Yesterday I spoke about four big changes in my work within the last year. This is the fifth: starting the process of developing an audience. Sure, over the years people have collected my work (including the above piece) but I’ve never been able…
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There were a few things that happened within the last year that made a big difference to my art making. The first was about commitment. When I first retired from my day job, I seemed to have gone madly off in all directions. I wanted to travel more. I wanted to improve my guitar and…
Rick Janson Art Studio 