This is a still life of, obviously, skates that are hanging against a wooden door. It's for my watercolor class at the Academy, which now Tom Herzberg teaches. I used to have Mat Barber-Kennedy, and I had hoped to have him again for 202 painting, but ended up with Tom instead.
Tom is incredible. His paintings are just so imaginative and clever. He had been an illustrator during his time before the Academy, and continues to do a few side jobs for the air force. But really. I'm very lucky to have him as a teacher.
B-K and Tom are so opposite from each other. One focuses on "what you see" when you paint, where the other stresses "what you know." I have found that you need both to produce a believable piece of art work.
In the painting above, i drew from a photo reference. HOWEVER, Tom thinks the taller skate's blade is out of perspective; that the viewer sees too much of the end. But how can this be? It's from a photograph! But he explains that an artist must tweak and correct photos, to apply our knowledge of how things look and rules of perspective when sitting down to draw.
well. to a less-trained eye, perhaps the blade does not look so wrong, but to him, it's a bit of a distraction. oh well, i tried.
A really nice still life piece, I can see what he's saying about the blade, but now you know. As far as rendering and color use go, I prefer this over your inked watercolor/marker work, you have some nice bits of colors blending to form shadow and reflected light simultaneously (I'm speaking particularly of the chassis heel of the lower skate.) If I had one critical thing to point it, it's be careful of super hard edges, they can make objects look too cut out. If that is your objective, more power to you, but most things in life have a softer edge due to focusing. That's my sermon, again, nice piece for the Fine Art show.
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