We have some nice flowers out on our back porch, and it was the first nice day since July, so I rushed outside to paint. My plein air skills are a bit rusty, but I think it turned out reasonably well.
Geoff Watson, “Flowers on the Porch,” oil on canvas, 18” x 24,” 2018.
It was too hot to paint outside today, so I did this little still life for fun.
Geoff Watson, "Battery," oil on canvas, 5" x 7," 2018.
It was chilly today, but it was so sunny that I just had to sneak outside for an hour to paint. I'm glad I did! I did this painting on a canvas pad, so it was intended as a practice painting, but I like how it turned out.
Geoff Watson, "House behind trees," oil on canvas, 9" x 12," 2018.
This birdbath resides in our front yard, but I've never seen a bird in it. Do birds actually bathe?
I had only an hour, so I just sketched the bath and simplified the background. It was 70 degrees and sunny -- a beautiful February day!
Geoff Watson, "Birdbath," oil on canvas pad, 9" x 12," 2018.
I just posted this picture in my "Master Copies" gallery, but I thought I'd say a bit more about it here. This is a copy of a small part of John Singer Sargent's "Lady Astor" (1909), which hangs in Cliveden, the former Astor estate in southern England. As I noted in the Master Copies gallery, Lady Nancy Astor was, among other things, the first female member of the House of Commons. She argued politics frequently with Winston Churchill, once saying that if she were his wife, she'd put poison in his coffee. Churchill supposedly replied: "Nancy, if I were your husband, I'd drink it."
I embarked on this copy to learn more about how Sargent made his portraits look so three-dimensional. I painted this in several sessions, spending about 10-15 hours; I didn't do much glazing, more just fussing with proportions and color temperature. Did Sargent paint this alla prima, or did he glaze?
My likeness is pretty good but not perfect. My Nancy is a tad thinner, with a slightly smaller nose and mouth. It'd have taken me another 15 hours to get it just right, and the purpose of the exercise wasn't to make an exact replica. I also couldn't resist warming up her skin tone a tad; in Sargent's day, a pale face (with reddish ears!) was more in style. Anyway, at some point, I decided I'd learned what I was going to learn, and I declared victory. Of course, as soon as I posted it here, I saw imperfections that I'll have to fix: the shadows on her neck being a prime candidate.
Incidentally, when I was photographing this painting, I couldn't keep glare out of the right side of the black background, so I've photoshopped that bit to make it blacker. I'm going to try again with a better camera, but in the meantime, I thought I'd post what I have. Oil on canvas, 11" x 14"; comments and constructive critique welcome.
