"The Farmer's Track" is a view across the valley from my home in Pukerua Bay. The colour and the contrast are a bit exaggerated, but I think it makes a dramatic composition. I'm not sure about the sky though - the skyline is too close to the mid height of the picture. I may yet cut off part of the sky to make it a more pleasing composition.
If you're wondering where the track is, it's the horizontal lines towards the upper right side of the hills.
If you're wondering where the track is, it's the horizontal lines towards the upper right side of the hills.
"Low tide, 8:00 a.m." is at Pauatahanui Inlet, about 5 minutes drive from my home. I took the reference photos on my 3 megapixel phone camera at high magnification, so they really only give a vague indication of the lighting and colours. The rest is from memory.
These two paintings can be seen on the Pastel page.
Over the last four months I've done at least 18 pastel paintings (some didn't make it to the website :-)). That amounts to about 1 1/2 per week, not counting the weeks we were away overseas. If I could sell them all at prices that I think are achievable then it wouldn't be enough to live on. And realistically, I don't think I can reasonably expect to sell them all, given some were not even good enough to show on the website!
So the choice is either to do more paintings, or sell for higher prices. The strategy at this stage is a bit of both. Looking at the prices that other artists are achieving for their works I don't think it is unreasonable to increase my prices once the sales start happening. I also think an average of two paintings a week is very achievable - it's just a matter of application and avoiding distractions.
Of course the number per week is not really a good measure - some of the more complex paintings (like "The Eyes Have It") take the best part of a week to do even with intense application and no distractions.
The problem with doing too much pastel work is that it's very hard on the fingers. My style is to blend pretty much everything, and that involves much rubbing of fingers on sanded paper. After the last two paintings, which were done pretty close together, the first three fingers on my right hand are worn almost right through the skin. It'll be a few days before I can to another pastel.
So in the meantime I'm teaching myself to paint with acrylics. I've tried acrylics before and always struggled with them - I'm not used to paint that doesn't move after it dries!
But I tried a small one last week and it seemed to go much better - it's actually turned out quite an acceptable painting. Encouraged by this I've bought some big tubes of acrylic paints - red, yellow, blue and white, and I'll be trying some more.
The big advantage of acrylic is that it doesn't need to be framed, so once it's done and signed it's ready to sell. I'll keep working at it and post more as things develop. One thing I had trouble with was getting a decent photo of the painting. The one attached below is the best I could manage, but not that good a representation of the actual painting.
These two paintings can be seen on the Pastel page.
Over the last four months I've done at least 18 pastel paintings (some didn't make it to the website :-)). That amounts to about 1 1/2 per week, not counting the weeks we were away overseas. If I could sell them all at prices that I think are achievable then it wouldn't be enough to live on. And realistically, I don't think I can reasonably expect to sell them all, given some were not even good enough to show on the website!
So the choice is either to do more paintings, or sell for higher prices. The strategy at this stage is a bit of both. Looking at the prices that other artists are achieving for their works I don't think it is unreasonable to increase my prices once the sales start happening. I also think an average of two paintings a week is very achievable - it's just a matter of application and avoiding distractions.
Of course the number per week is not really a good measure - some of the more complex paintings (like "The Eyes Have It") take the best part of a week to do even with intense application and no distractions.
The problem with doing too much pastel work is that it's very hard on the fingers. My style is to blend pretty much everything, and that involves much rubbing of fingers on sanded paper. After the last two paintings, which were done pretty close together, the first three fingers on my right hand are worn almost right through the skin. It'll be a few days before I can to another pastel.
So in the meantime I'm teaching myself to paint with acrylics. I've tried acrylics before and always struggled with them - I'm not used to paint that doesn't move after it dries!
But I tried a small one last week and it seemed to go much better - it's actually turned out quite an acceptable painting. Encouraged by this I've bought some big tubes of acrylic paints - red, yellow, blue and white, and I'll be trying some more.
The big advantage of acrylic is that it doesn't need to be framed, so once it's done and signed it's ready to sell. I'll keep working at it and post more as things develop. One thing I had trouble with was getting a decent photo of the painting. The one attached below is the best I could manage, but not that good a representation of the actual painting.
RSS Feed
