Holiday Retreat

112307 Artist Kenneth John KEN

i generally take a break from painting for a few months over the holidays and winter. for several reasons, mainly to give myself a break from painting, so that when i hit it hard again in the spring, i am refreshed with new ideas. i use the time off to study, try new techniques and don't put any pressure on myself to perform to sell paintings. i work on all medias for fun and like to try new things.

i am currently developing a new ecommerce site, surpriseart.com that specializes in selling art and crafts educational books, activity kits and supplies for children and adults. check it out, there is and will be more and more very nice products that all aspiring artists and craftsman can try and use. check it out and bookmark or make it a favorite in your browser. email me and i can give you a code for a 10% discount. just tell me you read my blog.

here are the last of my 2007 paintings. have a great holiday season. good luck with your art!!! ken

kenpaintings.com

Using Yellow

110707 Artist Kenneth John KEN

in this16x20" floral setting, i used 3 yellows: cadium yellow deep for the darkest values, yellow ochre for the mids and cadium yellow pale for the highlights. i tone them down with dioxazine purple. the base was dioxazine purple toned down with yellow ochre. the vase is cobalt blue toned down with cadium red deep and yellow pale. the greens were made with cobalt blue and the other yellows for the leaves and background. the reds are cadium red deep. titanium white was also used.

kenpaintings.com

Small To Big

Small to Big

110507 Artist Kenneth John KEN

before you make a larger painting and use a fresh new stretched canvas, you may want to make some small workup paintings to test the composition. i make several small paintings like these, use different color schemes, etc. i am not afraid to try wild and different things because i can either throw the small paintings out and no big financial or ego loss. the one on the left is on 6x8 canvas and since i like the composition and color scheme, i decided to make it into a 14x18 stretched canvas. the small paintings can be given away or sold or stored away.

on another note, i sell everything, even if it takes almost giving it away for nothing. i always figure at least i made a new patron, someone new to see my art. i lost my ego about my art years ago. not everyone is going to like your stuff, no matter how good you are. think about it, there are some master's works that you don't like. so of course, you have to not take it personally. just keep on truckin and believe in yourself (which is hard to do sometimes!!!).

kenpaintings.com

Designing A Logo

110107 Artist Kenneth John KEN

when your doing some graphic design work for a client, such as a logo, you will have to come up with several ideas or layouts, these are called thumbnails. don't be modest about a bid on this stuff, it takes a lot more time to come up with something that looks so simple when finished. i spent almost 6 hours total to come up with these below and selected the third one down. you can see it at surpriseart.com, as it is going to be an ecommerce web site. (these show arial font, but the web site is going to be verdana font, which is very similar, both are sans-serif).

kenpaintings.com

Along the Klamath River

103107 Artist Kenneth John KEN

this scene reminds me of being in northern california years ago, along the coast, with it's many river inlets and coves.

22x28", titanium white, cobalt blue, sap green, yellow ochre, cadium red and yellow pale.

kenpaintings.com

Paint Fruit with Painting Knives

103007 Artist Kenneth John KEN

If you want to learn how to oil paint with palette and painting knives, i have authored 4 how to instructional dvd video's on oil painting. shows my techniques of using the knives. you can see some short clips of these video's at you tube or on my website.

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kenpaintings.com

Limit Your Palette to Discover Colors

102907 Artist Kenneth John KEN

over the weekend, i painted these two impression paintings, one a still life and the other a seascape. painted them both with cobalt blue, cadium red deep, cadium yellow pale, sap green and titanium white. limiting your colors palette to the 3 primaries and green (there are some theorys that green is the the 4th primary) will allow you examine how the other tones of colors are made and why they appear as they do, especially the greens.

the main difference in greens is whether they lean towards yellow or lean towards blue. sap green leans towards yellow, viridian green leans towards blue. once you determine that, then they change tones by adding the complement.

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kenpaintings.com