Painters should mainly be worried about whether or not they enjoy painting.  It feels good to know that your work is valued by matching it with a selling price, but that’s not the reason to paint.  Selling art should be focused on creating a sustainable hobby, and in the respect it is certainly one of the most sustainable hobbies.

The recent economic slump has affected the ability for artists to sell work.  There is not a problem with your work when it cannot sell, there is a problem with the number of buyers.  The evidence is pretty clear: you hear it from artists, but you can see it in Google’s search trends.

Searches for oil painting remain neutral, people could be looking to buy, sell, or create oil paintings.  Searches like how to paint and how to draw have been increasing as people move from desiring to purchase art to making it.  Some of those people probably believe they will be able to make a living selling art as well, which is not easy.  The reason is people are no longer as interested in fine art or acquiring fine art.  Additionally, students of all types, art school, colleges, and universities, have realized that the up front investment of education is no longer a guarantee of payback.  Luckily, professional artists now face a time when they must teach in order to maintain an income, and hopefully it means more qualified instructors to foster an appreciation for all things artistic.

So, here is what is important:

1. Enjoy your art
2. Share it with others
3. Sell what you can
4. Buy what you can afford
5. Take advantage of free education on Learn2Paint, at your library, in clubs…

The best way to avoid these problems is to paint your darks using thin paint and your lights using thicker paint.  Darks can be thinned, or simply applied with very little paint and softly blended to eliminate reflective paint ridges.

This impasto technique means you must use more paint, thicker amounts and not thinned, in the light areas.  The light areas gain extra emphasis due to the natural shadows and reflections of the paint ridges, which makes highlights more effective.  

Impasto can be used in areas that don’t have extremely dark regions as well.  It’s all about getting the extra punch from your highlights!

Impasto brushwork sets a painting apart from a picture.  It adds interest as well as extra reflections that flat images miss.  This is why artists make a great deal of it, and also why it can be very controversial.

Scumbling can be used with close value colors to create interest.

Scumbling rock colors is a great way to add shape and realism.

Scumbling highlights gives the brightest colors, and even works well with shadow colors like light blues.

Scumbling can also be blended slightly more to create soft edges on trees and clouds.

Scumbling with white around highlight areas can create a glow that strengthens the light in a painting.

Orange plus blue makes ugly green, so sunsets over the water are often best done in stages, scumbling the orange highlights at the end.

This example uses scumbled colors in the rocks, water, and foam highlights.  The purpose is to layer many colors, and create the same interest that was experienced outdoors.

Tonalist paintings use value contrast, meaning black shadows make the white areas seem very bright.  This technique is somewhat limited, but always part of the solution by definition – shadows have to be darker.

The other choice is to use effective color in the shadows.  In the painting below, I use both methods.

The rocks give a strong dark to play light areas against.

But the most interesting shadow colors are in the wave.  Values are close to each other, and the slightly lighter, very pure blue is effective against the purplish gray next to it.

Light, purer colors always make shadows more interesting than just grays.  The pure colors don’t have to be primaries, just not grays, browns, or blacks.  Any color that could be mixed with white and only one or two primaries is useable, so any variety of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, or purple.  It also helps to place the color against an opposing color temperature (in the case above that is cool blue on warm purple).

• Keep it
• Give it to a charity auction
• Exchange it with another artist
• Throw it away

I don’t reccommend painting over old paintings because it’s never worth the effort and often ruins the next painting, new canvases are just too cheap today.  If your willing to sell at any cost, see my post about selling on eBay.

Interpreting light and color are Griffel’s talking points. Yes, the explanations are written well, not left to the artist to decipher. There are many images of paintings, not all from the author, lending credibility to her compilation. The major issue would be the style, seemingly amateur in a large number of the paintings since the emphasis is on color more than drawing. Griffel’s still lifes are much better than her landscapes due to the limited number of objects and size in relation to the canvas. She proves that she is an accomplished artist, but the examples seem to decline in appreciation after some study.

Cost: Excellent

Content: Good

Images: Good

Overall Value: Excellent

This small book is an interesting read, which paints a very understanable picture of a great painting teacher.  Does it make sense the Hensche should single out his painting method as the one true method while also calling for artistic freedom?  If you want to read more about his thoughts on other artists and art movements, this is a good book.  This book is not for a beginning painter and not a book on demonstration.  I felt the book was repetitive, the major points are successfully summarized at the end.  Hensche made a beautiful statement about painting for money which cannot be summarized with the same effect, but most of the other points don’t require much explanation.  The value of this book will depend on whether you are an art history lover or in agreement with Hensche’s views.  Of course, to summarize an artist in words is silly when the artist’s truest legacy is the art.

Cost: Good

Content: Good

Images: Poor

Overall Value: Fair

Susie Hodge takes on a master’s challenge – defining Impressionism, providing the best examples, and demonstrating how to achieve the same results – but her own skills might not be up to par.  She selects from Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Cassatt, Degas, Cezanne, Seurat, and Van Gogh.  She does a good job describing the movement and why the paintings are so different from other styles.  Each artist gets a reasonable description, however the demonstrations should be the focus of how, what and why.  The demonstrated images are not particularly useful since most lack that general explanation to use the skills in a completely different painting.  Her discussion of Cassat provides the best master examples in the book, and also some good points on what made Cassat effective.

Cost: Good

Content: Fair

Images: Good

Overall Value: Good