Gail Niebrugge's Blog
My client is delighted with the painting. After a little discussion about adding more color to the planter rocks she agreed. So, I added more color and definition to the rocks, punched up detail and contrast in the flowers, softened the tree shadows on the driveway and checked that all vertical lines on the house [...]
After contemplating the nearly finished painting for a few days, I’ve made some subtle changes; darkening the shadows on the garage, highlighting the rock trim on the house, and defining details throughout. I refined the gradation in the sky from light to dark, emphasized shadows in the gardens, perfected shading on the figure, and gave [...]
At this stage in the development of a painting I let it rest for awhile, and think. It looks almost finished, but it is not. This is the time for some serious evaluation. I will turn the painting upside down and sideways, looking for compositional flaws. I haven’t added finished detail yet and save that [...]
At this stage of the painting the house and background are partially finished, the foreground flower garden is barely roughed in. I’m establishing depth in the scene with color, and carefully choosing values. The seated figure is not painted at this time, and the rock borders are unpainted. I will work on those areas next, [...]
Again, I like to save time while painting. So, instead of taking down all of my photo references so that I can have an uncluttered background to evaluate the painting, I keep a bunch of empty mats in a variety of sizes handy to create a temporary mat around the artwork. This working mat helps [...]
Last summer a client commissioned me to create an original painting featuring her house and flower gardens. Here are the steps I use to create a painting with specific subject matter.
Gail Niebrugge (Knee-brew-ghe) born and raised in California has pursued art since childhood, winning a poster contest on the Johnny Jet television show at the age of twelve. Gail began her career as an illustrator for the US Navy and Marines in San Diego, and later established the Instructional Media Center for the Grossmont High School District in La Mesa, California. The Niebrugge family fell in love with Alaska while on vacation in 1976 and never returned home, instead they established a residence and studio in the remote interior settlement of Copper Center where the artist painted … [Read More...]
Wikipedia defines pointillism as; "a style of painting in which small distinct points of primary colors create the impression of a wide selection of secondary and intermediate colors." It goes on to say that the mind and the eye mix the color spots into a full range of tones and that it is closely related to Divisionism. Divisionism was practiced by Georges Seurat during the Neo-Impressionism period. He broke his color into basic elements and painted very small and regular dots. His dots are carefully placed as to not touch each other, so the white under painted canvas shows around all of the dots. I call my painting technique pointillism, but technically it is incorrect according to Wikipedia. The difference between my technique and true pointillism is that I use … [Read More...]