Path of an Artist

I've been busy in the studio, and neglecting my blog. :( But the work has been happening, and finished pieces are stacking up in the spare bedroom, and at the framers. As I paint, I'm still trying to find that happy medium between the expressive color, style and subject matter I love to paint, and the color style and subject matter that is appealing to a broad enough section of the public, that I can make sales and $$$. Right now, public acceptability is winning out, although I am enjoying the tropical colors of these new pieces, they feel a bit "mechanical" or like formula paintings.....they don't have the little bits of heart and soul I can put into my Expressionistic work. Painting people as a subject I can infuse them with purpose and emotion......trees are just trees, and mountains are just mountains. I need to learn "landscape language"..maybe I already know it, and I just don't realize it. ???

Well its back to work..time to talk to the palm trees. :) Later

The Electronic Age

Re-doing my website the last few days. It gets out of date so fast, and takes a lot of time to keep current. I'm about half done now, and hope to finish it up by the end of the week. The new version will be more compact, and easier to navigate, and display a lot more art.
One question I always ponder is wether I should put retail prices up on the site for the purchase of my work. Do people get more interested after they know the price, or before? I have an email contact link on my site but have never gotten an inquiry...............so I guess posting prices wouldn't scare anybody off would it?
Come May I am going to start contacting print maketers, to see if they might be any interest in publishing my work. The business end sure eats up my time, and I'm not really pushing on it as hard as I should.
Painted another beach scene this weekend..........the whole series will be posted on the "new" site soon.............keep watching. Later

Studio piece #4 comes to a finish

After a 10 day delay, studio piece 4 is finally starting to finish up. This weekend, I committed to the design, and started to build up the texture and depth of the piece. I try to wait until I like a design, and have worked out all the kinks before I bring out the "heavy" paint, as once the texture starts its hard to change course. When I paint, I prefer to create flow with the paint, that will follow the curves of the drawing, and aid moving the viewer through the work. It helps in keeping the piece interesting every time you view it. I also like to squeeze the subject matter onto the canvas, so you kind of look through a window at it......it seems more intimate that way.
I have decided to post all 6 studio pieces when they are done on my web site, for any who have taken an interest...so stay tuned. Later

A Sunday Speedie

I have had a sketch in my pad for about 2 weeks that I really like, but was worried about its general public appeal, which has kept me from making it into a full size studio work. Since the subject is a cup of morning coffee, and the fact that it could be appropriately hung in a kitchen or eating area, made a smaller scale piece seem like the answer. So this morning I decided to mix up some big piles of paint, and let it fly. The piece is a 16 x 20 acrylic, and the photos go from sketch pad, to newsprint pad, to sketch on canvas with Ultramarine Blue, to block in, to a pretty good finish. About 2 and a half hours work in all.

I really like the finish point now.............I am kicking around putting in a horizon line on the left side to keep the chair from "floating".......and maybe tomorrow after it is completely dry I'll add a tiny bit of highlighting, but no major reworks. These quick pieces look really fresh, and if you mess with them at all, they loose it in a hurry.

So hurray for "The first Sip"

Later

Whats your Saturday like??

This morning I got up and looked at Studio piece #4 which is blocked in and on my easel. I like the color palette so far, but the composition lacked the "flow" I like to have....the lines that lead the viewer around the piece. Too many rigid objects all pointing out of the painting, so a little re-sketching is in order.
I used to hate this as there are always things in each start that I like, and I would really procrastinate over painting them out. But I do find that if keep pushing at it.....something unexpected, different, and really cool will happen. I don't give up on a piece....I can't......I keep thinking about it all the time until I solve the problems that are bothering me. So far so good. As for tomorrow...........I painted a wonderful wine glass into the piece....that needs to be moved, and tipped more. &^%**$#$ I've heard said that making a painting is just a process of fixing things. When they are all fixed, well you're done. Is it really that simple?? Thats my Saturday.
I'm debating over wether to post jpegs of the studio pieces I'm working on for my gallery submission.. We'll see. Later

Responsibility of an Artist?

As I create original paintings in my studio, I often remember the familiar words from many of the people who look at my art. The "If I only had money I would buy that painting" , or something simular, that leads me to believe my work is desireable, but priced to high for the masses. Or maybe the "I could never pay that much", or "Thats too expensive for only a painting". I realize the average person does not know how much sweat, and heart and gut went into each painting, or that they really care about the 10 years of learning curve it took you to develop your skills. So is it my responsibility to educate these people? To give them enough insight into what went into the work, that they will see its true value?
I see a lot of people that are less talented than me making a fine living, who just know how to market and don't mind selling a customer a cheap reproduction under the guise of fine art. The guy who runs off prints on his home computer, and sells them as fine art. The artists who print off giclees, and dab a few strokes of paint on them so they miraculously become "originals".
Who's to blame for this? The customer who doesn't understand, or perhaps doesn't care what they are buying? Or the martists....the ones who can't make real art, but can market the daylights out of computer prints and pass off cheap repros as originals. Or perhaps the real artist who can produce quality originals, but finds himself running out of money to buy quality paints and canvases. Who is really getting "fooled" here, or are we all just in the end getting what we really wanted?
Back to work here..............Later

When is it Finished?

I always try to keep a newly finished piece in the studio for a while, just to see if anything "catches my attention". Today I'm blending out a passage in Piece #2 that keeps drawing my eye. After that it will be off for digital pix, and hopefully up on the website. Speaking of which, mine needs a bit of an overhaul. Lots of new work to go up, and some sold work to remove. I need to be twins(provided my other twin was an office mgr.) I also need to explore some alternative outlets to display and sell my work. All this doesn't leave me much time to go fishing. :)
Today officially starts piece #4.....It will be fun to see what appears. Studio piece #1, and #2 should appear on the web site soon! Happy painting...Later

At Last

Another major revision on studio piece #3 has led to a wonderfully streamlined design that I am now happy with! The colors have settled in and I can finally bring this work to a finish. I paint in acrylics because I do so much "searching" on the canvas when I paint. This medium allows me the flexiblity to repaint, and not lose the freshness of the work. The colors never muddy, and the overlaying of drawings and color will lead to some wonderful "happy accidents" as I paint.

I stretched a blank canvas for piece#4 toady and I will begin work on it tomorrow. On we go.

Today I have to go into town, so I will take my sketching tools and try to capture some more beach images. The painting attached is another generated from my beach drawings.....I use these to learn how to paint fast and loose and to experiment with color. Later.

Take 2

I did a major repaint on my studio piece #3 this weekend....changed the design and simplified it. I took out a lot of the detail. I am trying to abide by the"if its not necessary, don't put it in" rule. I find if I keep this in mind while I work, I get a much stonger finished painting.
I have studio work #4 on a newsprint pad, and I like the design well enough that I will begin the work on canvas. The goal is 6 to 10 studio pieces, so I can begin gallery submissions! Painted another sketch pad quickie this weekend also, simular to the one in the above post. Later this week I will post a Jpeg of another.
Was bogged down by office work yesterday..what a drag. Back to the easel today. Later.

Something new?

http://studioosterberg.com/
I brought my 2nd studio piece up to about 95% finished yesterday, and worked on piece #3 for a while. Piece 3 is proving to be a bit perplexing. It shows just enough hope that it will turn the corner, but its developing so slowly. Yesterday I pushed pretty hard on the color, and it started to improve....but it just doesn't "sing" yet...it is still "dis-chord". So I'll try to harmonize all the color chords a bit, hopefully with out losing the color brightness.
I want to try another speed painting done from my sketch pad today also...I have a few more cool thumbnails I'd like to bring to life. The painting in this post is my first beach "quickie" I try to keep painting time down to under 2 hrs. with no retouching the next day. I find the more I fix something the less fresh it looks.
Need to set up studio piece #4 today also, so I can keep production happening. My goal is a minimum of 5 studio works a month.......we'll see. Bye for now.

Todays task

Its Saturday morning here at Studio Osterberg, and I am working on completing a series of paintings to be used for Gallery submissions. My 1st piece is completed, and I have 2 more in mid process....one of which has "settled" into a nice piece and just needs the work done on it to finish it off. The other is coming to a crisis point which is when you labor mightily on it and it just doesn't have the "glow" or magic, or excitiement. I am contemplating wholesale changes in design and pumping up the color, but I always hate erradicating a weeks worth of work. The only thing that allows me to do it, is that when I look at the piece, there's nothing there.........so destroying nothing seems acceptable.
I am also doing some impulse paintings from sketches in my field pad, using sketches that are interesting enough to catch my fancy, but may not lend themselves to full blown studio pieces. Doing a quick 2 hour 16" x 20" acrylic, or a small oil pastel in my watercolor pad enables me to bring these sketches to life and allows me to be really free with color choices, and looseness of painting style........plus it is really fun and sometimes you get a surprisingly nice piece!! Maybe next time I'll post one of these with my entry.
TIME TO GO TO WORK :.))

A Rainy Day

Today I'm on the "mainland" as we Hawaiian residents call it. Almost 3000 miles from home, and away from my wife for 12 days. I think of the new studio, I am going to build back home, and all the new paintings I will create there. I want to try some new media..oils in place of my usual acrylics, and go back to my old subject matter..."intimacy". All of that seeems so far away now....but it will happen before I know it. Somewhwere down the line....the success I wish for waits....I'll see you there!

Life with my sketch pad

Yesterday I looked through my sketch pad at all the drawings I had done in the past month to a year. I was surprised at how good and interesting a lot of them looked. At the time I drew them I hated them..they were no good and not even close to what I was trying to draw. But seeing them with fresh eyes after some time had passed I realized they were pretty cool. I was inspired to actually bring some of them to life in full color, and get my paints out.
I have found that in previous paintings where my sketch pad was used for inspiration, I often said "I like this drawing, if only the subjects leg looked more like a leg, or maybe the head was the wrong shape or whatever. I found myself "fixing" things in my sketches as I painted.......till the painting was so far removed from the launching point sketch, the reason I had been attracted to it in the first place was gone. I came to a realization that the reason the sketch had turned out the way it had, was because I had wanted it to come out that way! While I sketch very fast, and they seem crude...they capture a certain something........
Hence I have decided to sketch everyday, even if its only one quick drawing, and maintain the crude integrity of the drawing when I turn it into a painting. Can't wait to see what happens....J

Studio Osterberg says hello world!

Welcome....My name is James, and I love color! The more pure and vibrant it is, the more exciting it becomes. In this opening post at Studio Osterberg, lets look at some of my art, and some really eye catching color!

This piece is titled "Dancing in Frisco" and was completed after arriving home from my first trip to San Francisco. It was my first trip to California, and the the first time I'd ever been to a city like San Francisco. Needless to say I came home with a sketch pad full of ideas and a ton of enthusiasm.

My aim with this piece was to capture the quirky, exciting people and night life that comes out "after dark" in the bay area. A swirl of color and activity....the twinkling and reflections of background light, a seductive embrace and surrender, all go into the making of this piece.

So welcome all painters and color enthusiast, and remember......Life is to short to not live it in COLOR!