Susan Kennedy Art

  Susan Kennedy Studio Spring Newsletter May 6, 2021 ____________________ Thank you for being a supporter or subscriber to my newsletter! “Study: Making it to the Edge of the Woods,” a new abstract in my Spring Show on my site I’d love to invite you to see my “Spring Show” paintings listed on my website gallery! (one of the paintings is shown above, and the paintings include my realism as well) I’d also REALLY love to invite you to check out and preorder at a temporary SUPER low price (or free if you have Prime) my new painting book “Painting Landscapes with Light and Depth ,  My new landscape book coming out this May a labor of love and an explanation of my thoughts and methods behind the realistic landscape painting which has dominated my artistic life. It comes out May 28, 2021! Scroll down to the bottom of this newsletter to see an excerpt, and find another one here on my blog .  An Artist’s Quandary – Spring 2021 Me with my beloved two genres So I’ve got a familia...

I am crazy about this photo and feel that it's a good example of how painting from photos can be helpful!  The main advantage of taking lots of reference photos, for you as an artist, is that so many unplanned but beautiful compositions jump out at you if you browse through them and crop. You limit what you will consider for a composition when you lift your camera to a scene: you've got compositional rules in your head, and you're looking at a favored focal point. But when you flip through - and crop - your photos later on, those ideas will have faded and the flat images themselves will present new and fresh ideas to you. This particular shot, taken by me, a tourist in London, was not well planned or composed. But not only an interesting crop, but even some water which spilled and spattered this particular print and faded and blended some colors made me look at it in a different way. The colors which faded and ran together made the scene have a very otherworld...

You can see some of the demos I've done in class here in the next couple of days. I'm trying to dig through the piles of paintings, I'm going to have to use them to prop open doors or something. I had been working on this in class, it was more of an "alla prima" type seascape, quickly done, with more loose and impulsive brushwork. You might think it's not, but when you see the more detailed and layered Edisto scene which is basically the same (just a different treatment), you'll notice the difference. I'm experimenting more and more with alla prima, it's where I want to be, and it certainly is more satisfying for students. You can get the beautiful blending of colors, and avoid the problem of picking up the colors of wet under layers by NOT HAVING THEM, ha! It feels strange and wrong to start with a white canvas and paint each section jigsaw-puzzle style, but the payoff is worth it. Thanks for looking, and if you want to see this painting on ebay, ...