Note cards for any occasion

These unique notecards were designed by Pat Creedon Design, Inc. using original art by Paul Creedon. They are currently available at Koenig Art Emporium in Darien, CT or directly from Pat Creedon Design. Purchase them by the package of 8, or one at a time. Four of Paul Creedon's pastels are featured (2 of each in the packages of 8) and they are blank inside.

Coloring outside the lines

Four Apples original pastel painting.

The first still life was framed and hung in the solo art show held last Fall. I had looked forward to seeing what it looked like up on the wall and was disappointed. It had been hung in the frame crooked because I had not colored in the part beneath the table edge all the way to the pencil guideline line I had drawn. Let this be a lesson to all: don't keep it between the lines. Let things bleed on past the borders a little. In other words, coloring outside the lines can be a good thing!

Second, as an in-law pointed out, the apples looked a bit like tomatoes. They were too shiny. You might say I was relieved it didn't sell so I could see if I could fix the problem. Later on the framer we use needed a favor involving taking the pastel out of its frame so he could use it in another project.

But then the apple/tomatoes still life was left on a shelf for a long time. I was sick and didn't quite know what to do with the picture anyway. 

A solution is found

Four Apples still life as it is now.

This week I sprayed fixative over the whole painting and drew a "new" version over the old one. This second edition is less colorful, (on purpose; maybe being ill affected my outlook on life?), and the apples were toned down, roughed up a bit, and simplified a little. Not too much, since the point was to have them look fairly realistic and a bit less like tomatoes! In any event, this is what it looks like now.* The picture was painted out to the edges and beyond, so when it gets reframed, the table edge should be level. I think it succeeds now as a pastel painting of apples. What do you think?

*When I was ten, my father had a very difficult time convincing me that tomatoes are not fruits, but rather are vegetables. I insisted that vegetables come in dull green and brown colors, and certainly not in cheery bright red. On the other hand, he pointed out that fruits taste good, and thus won the argument. 

A Place Called Innisfree

Here's a scene from a place called Innisfree Garden in Millbrook, New York.

Millbrook is a town in the eastern Hudson Valley in New York State. My wife drove us up there as a day trip one steamy August day several years ago. We went down a not very promising dirt road that the map said would lead to a nice garden. It did. 

Innisfree Garden Scene by Paul Creedon

An elderly gentleman relieved us of some cash and directed us around the sites. He looked relieved to have someone to talk to. What on earth the place had originally been I cannot imagine, but it had a lake and numerous stone terraces covered with plantings and connected by decaying stairways. Nothing about it made any sense, but I took pictures of everything with my old Canon Sure Shot. One of the photos later mutated into the pastel landscape painting here. 

A Small-Scale Pastel

The pastel is only 7" by 5", which meant I could interpret the scenery fairly loosely. On this occasion being a little messy was just the ticket to getting what I wanted. I wish I liked some of my other pastel landscapes as much. The stone wall in front gave me a lot of trouble, but the decision to do the foliage with simple chalk strokes was forced on me by the small scale. That part went quickly and easily and came off on the first try. If only all my paintings went as smoothly. 

After a couple of hours wandering through the garden we were both on the verge of passing out from heat exhaustion. We found a diner in town, and after being cold shouldered at first by some locals we managed to get a table and I had a very tall and frosty soda, a hot dog and a piece of Boston Cream Pie.  

I like the painting partly because I think it works, and partly because it reminds me of how good that first sip of coke tasted in the diner afterwards. 

Creating Art Without Time Travel

Since I have been working on landscapes for the past several weeks, it's obviously time  to talk about a still life again. This one isn't in an art show; I just am fond of it. It isn't perfect; I would do the wood table in a different way if I had a TARDIS* and could go back and rewrite time. But that would mean crossing my own time stream, which would blow up a third of the universe, so it will have to stay as it is. I can't change it now because the picture is already in a frame.

Doing a still life with glass is not as hard as it seems.    

Making the glass bud vase seem transparent was the primary temptation, er, I mean challenge in this one. People get scared at just the mention of painting a clear object with the background showing through. They shouldn't: mostly you just blur whatever's behind the glass and throw in some highlights and a reflection or three and you're there.

Still life with glass vase.

I gave the background some texture by cross hatching with pastel pencils, and by smudging the parts where it would show through the vase introduced a sense of the glass's smoothness.

The importance of the pastel painting's background

I made the background lighter in tone on the right hand side in order to balance the dark shadow cast by the vase. The background is dark on the upper part so the red rose would look more prominent. The heavy highlight on the nearest edge of the vase leads your eye up to the rose, and corrects what might otherwise be a very strong tendency pulling the viewer's eye to the left. And besides, highlights are cool. The lighter area in the middle of the vase's shadow is the light source shining through the glass, and is also meant to correct the pull to the left.

Was I thinking about all of this while making the picture? Of course not. Don't ever believe art teachers when they tell you the artist thought of all this before they started painting. The painter is just fixing the mistakes he makes while doing the project. The successful works are as much a product of luck as of anything else. You never see the stuff that doesn't work.

*if you are not a fan of Doctor Who... well you just should be.

Upgrades in the New Model

Was it last year's model or this year's?

The picture below is similar to one currently in a show. It has a tarnished piece of copperware, a dark background, and a copper spout curved toward the right side of the piece.

I went looking for a scan of the one in the show and found this. But it didn't seem right. Then I remembered the piece in the current show was completed at the last minute before another show several months back and there hadn't been time to scan it before it was framed.

Sure enough I checked the picture on my website, and it showed a similar, but better painting, and yes it was in a frame.

So what was this one? An earlier experiment concerned with the same themes which went in a different direction and then got pushed (literally) to the back of the closet. I did a newer version honing in on the same obsessions and forgot about the earlier one.

An artist's obsessions

What obsessions? Well, I love the look and feel of copper and the reflections created by other objects on it. The faint hint of tarnish on the short watering can later became a big spot of tarnish on a tall watering can. The wine bottle made it in again because I just thought I could do a better job with it, and the candle stick snuck into the right hand side of the newer version to echo the tarnish blotch of the taller watering. The red cloth got unfolded because it seemed too busy in the earlier piece.

Still, I had forgotten that I did the earlier painting. Possibly the little disappointments hung around in the back of my head for the rest of the year, and got a redesign at the end of it. They do it with cars every fall, why not with paintings?

Paul has a Still Life in an Art Show

You'll want to see this in person!

Go visit it at the Carriage Barn until October 3rd. It's the Member Show for the New Canaan Society for the Arts and if you click on the link you'll get an idea of the space and the hours. Drive in either driveway of the magnificent estate owned by the town and you'll find the carriage barn next to the powerhouse theatre and both are to the left when facing Waveny mansion. The artist members all get to enter one piece at no charge and no commission so the art can be very affordable. So do your walls a favor and go pick up some fine original art today!

Going from Drawing to Painting

Vermont view

Here is a sketch or study and the pastel painting developed from it and the photo taken at the location. Personally I like the drawing a bit better than the painting. Still, the two shouldn't be set in opposition to each other.

I've been drawing all my life, so that part comes more easily to me. Nonetheless, the challenges presented by the painting are much more involved, and I haven't been doing pastels for nearly so long.

Vermont view with river

Adapting to the Art Medium 

The drawing had to be adapted to a different size and shape, and all the squiggles and shortcuts used in the drawing just don't work in a color format. The painting would look like a confused mess.

I made the river the central motif of the painting, which meant the details of the foliage had to be throttled back, so as not to draw the viewer's eye in too many directions. The tree branches in the top left corner were reversed, so to speak. Since the painting format was more nearly square, I needed the branches to point upwards, so the design would seem more evenly weighted.

The Art of Balance

I wanted to show the sky, which the foliage was obscuring. The colors of the distant horizon fascinated me, and I wanted the river to direct the eye to them. The clouds also needed to be more prominent, to justify the shadows cast on the forests in the middle distance.

The evergreen on the right hand side side was played up, so the whole piece would be properly balanced, and to make the river the center of attention. Unlike the foliage on the left, the evergreen branches point to the river, where I wanted people to look, so they would be drawn to the eerie colors in the far distance. 

What differences do you find between the two?

Sometimes You Need a Redo

The original version of this landscape pastel of a Colorado Blue Spruce in Connecticut was done in a looser style. You can see it in a previous post of mine. I painted over it to see how a smoother version would look. I don't really like either one. Someday the more successful aspects of each edition may be incorporated into a larger scale pastel painting. 

Sometimes a piece of artwork can only be fixed by completely starting over. I do best with a redo when I'm in a patient mood, and have thought about the problems for a while.