Paul Wolber Art Studio

Groceries 6in. x 6in. (15.2cm x 15.2cm) acrylic on gesso primed board
For current price and shipping cost send email HERE

To see all my past work on this blog click HERE.

At top above is the finished update with color balanced and added details. I always think you should be able to see into the dark shadows of a painting so I've lightened those shadow areas and warmed up the cool shadows to adjust the ambient light.

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Monday, April 23

A lot of people have asked me to do more demos, so I’ll shoot a few photos of this one as I go.

The paper bag painting is an assignment I give to beginning painting students. Why?, because it forces one to see color in something that we don’t think of as having much color. I usually don’t have students work this one on a colored ground but I decided to use blue here as a contrast to the warm tones in the bag. The highlights will immediately pop out and give a contrast to the ground. I decided on the 6in. x 6in. format for this one because there was too much dead space in the composition at 5in. x 7in.

Photo one is the conte drawing on the blue ground and photo two is my first layer of rough color to see where the contrasts need to go. There is still a lot of work to do on this one since there are so many facets or planes in a wrinkled paper bag. Each plane picks up light from a different direction so the colors change a lot from one surface to the next. I’ve got my work cut out for me on this one.

Keep watching and see where it goes.

© Copyright by Paul Wolber

 

I'm taking a break today to catch up on correspondence with all those who have sent questions, want critiques or have made comments on my blog. I'd like to hear from more of you as you take a look at my blog. A lot of people have stopped by lately but so many just take a look and sometimes are reluctant to make comments. I'm just now in communication with a number of people around the world through the blog. One is working in South Korea and another is living in Egypt and another in China. What a great experience to be able to communicate with people like this just because I started showing my work here.

Later, I'd like to take some time to talk about exhibiting works, how we hang them on our walls or display them to best advantage, but since I'm doing odd jobs around the house today, I can't take time to seriously deal with this idea. One thing I've thought about lately, though, is that small works don't need to be hung on the wall. They can display very well on a tabletop, shelf, or mantel if you place them on a small easel (see the example below). I'll try to get back to painting on Monday.
© Copyright by Paul Wolber

 

© Copyright by Paul Wolber

To purchase a painting or to communicate with the artist send an email to: wolberinchina@hotmail.com

 

This is the finished painting of Watermelon Wedges. I tried to retain as much of the color as possible and at the same time keep the fresh, wet look of the melon. Below it is the first draft showing much of the red colored ground.

 

finished painting

first draft

 

SOLD
5in. x 7in. (12.7cm x 17.8cm ) acrylic on gessoed Masonite®
To purchase a painting or for additional information email: wolberinchina@hotmail.com

I just started a new painting, again using a colored ground, but this time a red ground to enhance the color of the watermelon.

It’s always exciting to see the lively colors popping out, so I thought I would share this with those of you who watch my blog. Last time several people thought the painting was finished right away, but if you see it “in the flesh” you would know it needs more work. If you are truly an expressionist by nature, you will probably want me to stop now and not finish what I intended. This is the fun of watching a painting develop. The colors will actually tame down as I continue. The trick is to stop before I go too far and lose the excitement of the work.

You can see the red ground coming through in a lot of places so this is what gives it that wild, expressive look at this point.

© Copyright Paul Wolber 2007

 

For inquiry about a commission or other paintings send email to: wolberinchina@hotmail.com

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Green Grapes: Final Step (Step 5)

 

5” x 7” acrylic on gessoed Masonite®
SOLD

I thought you might be interested in seeing the development of a painting on a colored ground. When you decide to own one of these works you will have a better feeling about the process and nature of the painting.

The purpose of a colored ground is to set the color tone for the ambient light in the work. It can go either way, with a warm toned ground requiring that you lay in cool tones coming forward. Or as in this painting beginning on a deep green ground, then building up warmer tones, which advance forward. The first panel shows the simple contour drawing in white conte pencil, which gives me a working drawing on the ground surface. Then I begin laying in background and some foreground color with a few strokes showing what will be in the middle ground.

Next, I want to get a feeling for how the surface will feel by modeling the shapes, particularly in the grapes. At this point I can begin to get excited about seeing the forms emerge and how the overall image is going to feel Also, I need to experiment with the colors to see what range of color I will need to get the overall balance of light, color and texture. That is as far as I got this evening (Friday night).

Since this weekend is a particularly busy one for me, I probably will not get to the final stage until early next week, maybe Monday or Tuesday, so keep tuned and I’ll post the rest when I get back to work then.

I made a few additions last night. You may need to look closely to see them. The two grapes on the right are sharpened up and pick up a little yellow/green. The stem and tabletop have added tone and shadow. I've tried to enhance the wet, slurpy look to make you want to pick one of these and eat them. The only thing left to finish is the front edge of the table to give a warmer contrast to the cool, wet grapes. It should be finished by tomorrow if I can get back to it then.

The last step is to finish the foreground tabletop. The grapes are resting on an old oak flower stand my grandfather made. He was a carpenter, blacksmith, and barn builder in Illinois and I still have some of his woodwork and tools. The painting is now finished and all that remains to be done is a signature, a light coat of matt varnish and framing if the collector wishes. As you can see, I usually like to work from left to right and from background to foreground, but may also work on many parts of the composition at once if I want to make sure the work is unified.

© Copyright Paul Wolber 2007

For inquiry about a commission or other paintings send email to: wolberinchina@hotmail.com

Ornament: A study in light and background/foreground unity

 

Ornament:This image was used as our December Seasons Greeting card for 2006
7in. x 5in. (17.8cm x12.7cm) acrylic on gessoed Masonite®
SOLD

Because I've just begun to work on the next painting which I'll be posting soon, this is an earlier work that was never posted on daily painters website but was on my blog last November.

Backgrounds are always important, and in this painting the background was used to complement the ornament and to get the light to dance around the foreground form. My next painting will demonstrate the use of a colored ground to set up the ambient light for the painting, so I thought this work would act as a good contrast to that idea.

 

Illustration of painting process in "Red Grapes" Classical Realism acrylic still life painting

 

Mid-point in the process

 

Finished process
SOLD
Red Grapes with Glass Bowl and Carved Wood Table
5in. x 7in. (12.7cm x 17.8cm ) acrylic on gesso primed Masonite®

To see all my past work on this blog click HERE.

Painting Illustration

A number of people have asked about my painting process, so I’ll use this space to reveal a few points about the way I like to work.

Here, you can see a mid-point step in the “Grapes” painting and compare it to the finished version. Since acrylic is an aqueous medium, I like to keep the lights open as long as possible, similar to a watercolor, to keep the work fresh and clean. Once you close up those highlights it’s very difficult, if not impossible to get them back again with the same freshness. As you can see, I first worked fairly rapidly in laying down colors in the grapes without too much worry about blending or softening the transitions from highlights to shadows. I wanted to see where my brightest lights and darkest darks were going to be. Since I’m a southpaw, I tend to work from upper left to lower right just because it’s the most comfortable movement for me, and because when viewing a canvas or board the eye tends to flow that way across the surface. I sometimes use a colored ground over the gesso, but in this case, I wanted clear, white highlights, so I painted directly over the gesso surface.

The initial drawing was laid in very lightly with graphite, so it’s hard to see in this small illustration. As the work progressed across the surface, I could then go back at intervals and lay in either a light wash or a more opaque layer to blend and smooth the surface of the grapes. The most difficult part is in knowing when to stop at some point between the rough, spontaneous initial work and the layering process. If the layering is taken too far the work will lose some of its spontaneity.

The glass was kept fairly simple. Observing where the grapes are slightly distorted or lightened by refractions and where the colors become more cool or warm from the refracted light will enhance the feeling of transparency. The wood table needed to have a middle ground between shiny reflections and warm wood grain tones. The main problem for me was being able to get enough highlights to see into the shadows to reveal the carved forms without overworking this area. I just tried to keep a complex surface simple.

This work is available under the March 27 posting.

©2007 Copyright by Paul Wolber

I tried to experiment with a mix of Classical Realism, Impressionism and a bit of subliminal expressionism in this acrylic landscape painting of China terraces.

Many Chinese people don’t feel they’ve eaten unless they have had their rice for each meal, breakfast, lunch or dinner, it doesn’t matter. No wonder there are rice terraces in the countryside as far as one can see and beyond.

This painting is a further development of the posting on December 19, 2006. I decided to go back and focus on the landscape in the terraced fields in addition to the water buffalo. The terraces in the distance just keep going up the mountainside. It created an interesting depth of field I tried to capture here.

 

 

 

SOLD
Rice Terraces
5in. x 7in. (12.7cm x 17.8cm ) acrylic on gessoed Masonite®
To purchase a painting or for additional information email: wolberinchina@hotmail.com 

 

 

 

 

Mountain Passage
$110.00 unframed
5in. x 7in. (12.7cm x 17.8cm ) acrylic on gessoed Masonite®
To purchase or for price and additional information email: wolberinchina@hotmail.com
Available

 

 

Lodge drawing Not available for sale

 

Here in China, I’ve hiked, backpacked, climbed and ridden horseback up more mountains than I have anywhere else in the world. This is part of the Qionglai Mountain Range at the eastern end of Hengduan Mountains in Sichuan Province. The peaks are between 6,250 meters and 4,000 meters and you can see the vegetation line where the snow overtakes any vegetation year around. The sky is clear even in China at this altitude.

Since I’m not a mountain climber in the true sense of the word, I never got to the top of these mountains. I’m here to see the beauty of the perspective moving back into space and to capture what I see and feel on canvas. Here you can truly see the principle of warm tones advancing in the foreground and cool colors receding into deep space.

We stayed in the small log lodge overnight (see insert drawing) and in the morning there was snow on the ground that quickly melted when the sun came up.

 

 

Hei Long Tan Park Temple

 

SOLD
Hei Long Tan Park Temple
5in. x 7in. (12.7cm x 17.8cm ) acrylic on gessoed Masonite®
To purchase a painting or for additional information email: wolberinchina@hotmail.com

We came upon this temple in Li Jiang, Yunnan Province in a place called Hei Long Tan Park. It is one of the most beautiful temples I’ve seen in China because of its repetition of forms and almost white color scheme. I think the visual image speaks for itself.

On another topic, a collector recently became interested in one of my small paintings, but had some questions about buying small works and was hesitant to buy on line. Here is the collectors statement and my response:

"I really like your art but I'm hesitant to buy art on the Internet and these paintings seem so small."

You raised several good questions I’ll try to respond to. First, most of the paintings on daily painter websites are quite small, in the range of 5” x 7” to 8” x 10”. The reason for artists doing daily paintings is that we do small paintings so they can be done in a day or so rather than several weeks and post them on the Internet. My large paintings, for example, sell for $1,000 to $5,000 and require several weeks to more than a month to paint so I can’t sell them for a lower price and still make a living wage and if they are sold through a gallery I need to take into consideration that a fairly large commission needs to be paid to the gallery dealer.

Daily painting on the internet has allowed a whole new venue for artists to sell work on a daily basis and still get a small income for their work, and if you think about it, that’s not a big income. If a painter sells one painting a day for $100.00 and sells one every weekday for a year, that’s only $24,000, hardly a subsistence living in today’s world. Fortunately, I don’t need to sell my work daily, since I’m a retired professor, and have a separate income. I’m doing this because I enjoy it and want to share my work with people who would not be able spend $1,000 to $5,000 for a work of art.

The idea of small artworks or miniatures has a long tradition all the way back to Rembrandt whose small prints and etchings are very tiny, in some cases only 2 or 3 inches in size, but they are great masterpieces in their own right.

Second, you are right to have some hesitancy about buying art on the Internet. Computer monitors are not always so accurate and can be misleading. And, there are all varieties of so-called artists trying to sell their work this way and some of them are not so professional.

However, once you get to know an artists work, you can then make better judgments about their work, even if you haven’t seen it in person. I assure you my paintings are professionally done and in most cases look better in real life then on a computer monitor where you can’t see the subtle color changes, but I’ve been painting and teaching art for over 35 years. Obviously, that’s not the case for some of the artists showing their work on the Internet.

At any rate, I hope you will not be dismayed, and will continue to watch for my work and other artists on the Internet. As you do, I’m sure you will develop a sense of whose work has quality and will be able to make good judgments about the merit of the work. It’s a great way to own small works of original art rather than hanging reproductions on your walls, and in some cases it can even be a good future investment as the value of the artists work increases.

This collector did end up purchasing two of my works, so I hope what I said made some sense and helped a new collector make good judgements about buying art in the future.