Today I've started blogging! Check out my website for available paintings and prints at
www.judewiesenfeld.com.
Here you will see my paintings in progress, my art tips and whatever seems interesting to me...artwise.
Please leave me your comments and questions. Let's make this a blog that you find helpful and fun.
So many beginners in art think of it as incredibly relaxing. I can get lost in my painting, but getting "into" it is never easy. Drawing correctly is a top priority. The best way to approach a painting is to take time deciding what to paint (like a good marriage, you want to develop the painting carefully). Lots of small correct decisions will carry you forward with the "development" of the work. Be patient! Most paintings don't look like much until very near the end when the darks and lights and "tweeking" takes place. Anyone can learn. Half the success is in the interest you have in the activity itself.
Today I would like to recommend to you two art books:
"Keys to Drawing" by Bert Dodson (the best book on the subject that I have found in the twelve years that I have been teaching)
"Painting Wildlife in Watercolor" by Peggy Macnamara and Marlene Hill Donnelly (beautifully illustrated paintings and detailed information on the process of painting animals)
The three colors you can mix to make a rich black are:
Crimson Alizarin
Sap Green
Ultramarine Blue
I prefer to not use black out of the tube, as it can create a hole in your painting...not literally (of course), but the area covered with the black will seem to be lost, ugly, not a part of the painting. If the black you mix is for trees, you can mix it with a little more green. If the area is a dark shadow from a blue vase, it can lean towards the bluer side of the scale, etc. Here is a painting of mine with a lot of black in it that is rich with red/green and blue color.
This is me at the VAG 60th Anniversary Show beside the painting that won the Golden Artist Colors $100 award at VIVA Gallery. This is also the painting that I have been using on my business cards and address labels. Now I will be choosing what paints to spend my certificate on...what fun : )
The painting is finished or as most artists will tell you...it has been abandoned. I am actually very happy with "Homage to J.K." and will enter it in the Score VII Southern California Open Regional Exhibition running from Oct. 29th to Nov. 16/08 at the VIVA Gallery. 
Ok, so I'm NOT finished "Homage to J.K.". I will work on the upper left side for a bit more (it's too washed out, isn't it?). Here it is for you to decide and I'm adding a Black and White as well for extra help deciding. 
Here's a dragon fly that I saw at my post office. Wish I could have taken a photo of him from above and seen his wings spread out fully.
I found this baby grasshopper in the shade tucked inside a rose at the back of the bush I planted. Isn't he cute? I may paint him. 
Here is what I did today. Is it starting to look more developed? I am adding Manganese Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Crimson Alizarin and some Lemon Yellow to the nooks and cranies. Each color is applied seperately and allowed to dry. Because I don't want to get too dark too soon, I keep examining the painting with a squinted eye to see the darks and lights, deciding if the balance is good by eliminating the mid range of values (that's what the squinting does). I also use red accetate for the same reason. When you look throught the red accetate, the red turns your image to a black to white range of values. This makes it easier to decide how dark to go. Taking a photo of your painting in Black and White achieves the same goal.
Ok...I'm in the shadows. This is a short blog, because I'm painting today and teaching tomorrow. Today, see if you can spot what I've done since I put the last post up. Sort of a "Where's Waldo?"
This is "Homage to J.K." It is obviously a work in progress. Here you can see a painting without the darkest darks. When I have finished adding the dark and light shadows, the objects on this bookshelf should move forward and the perspective then will enhance the composition. You can't have the lights without the darks and you can't have the darks without the lights. In other words, don't be afraid of the dark (s). This is a common fear of beginners: not painting in the shadows using a dark enough value. Watercolor paints dry lighter than they appear when you put them on paper, so if you end up too light in the shadows...just add more paint. Cover these areas with washes (I usually use the colors that make up black) until you see the highlighted areas (lightest areas) pop. By "pop" I mean become parts of the painting that the eye goes to first i.e. focal points. More about that in a later blog. I will post the finished painting, hopefully by September 22, when I enter it in the Score VII Southern California Open Regional Exhibition. Keep your fingers crossed, please.
This is what I've been up to for the last few weeks. We found a tortoise behind our garbage cans in late April shortly after our dog, Zena, died. I posted a neighborhood sign and he was picked up by a family that said he'd been missing for four months from their home more than 10 miles away from our house. Imagine what an adventure he'd been on.
