Original Art, Prints and Cards
It seems like ages since I’ve painted but I’m back to the easel again and I finally finished the acrylic painting “Skating Outdoors”! Yahoo! After changing the color of the boy’s jacket three times, I’m satisfied with dark green. The finish detail included adding more definition to the trees in the background, punching up the [...]
There, I think I’ve found the color of ice. It looks like it is in the sun, but not as bright as the snow. Whew, that little section of the painting has many layers of dots! Next I’ll begin to finalize the figures and the snow covered trees. People often ask; “how long does it [...]
It is humiliating and humbling to publish the progress of a painting and during the process completely mess it up! I could have just skipped photographing this phase and no one would be the wiser, but I think it is a good lesson. Painters often go too far, and don’t know when to stop! I [...]
Leaving the figures in their original “roughed in” state, I concentrated on darkening the color of the sky to emphasize the sunlit peaks in the background. I’m also darkening the ice, but now it is a little too dotty and doesn’t look smooth. The kids look like they are skating on gravel. To create a [...]
It is hard to keep my momentum going on this painting because I’ve had so many other commitments to deal with. I work best when I can block out a period of time of one or two weeks, and paint every day. This is a busy time of year and I paint whenever there is [...]
The above photo shows that I’ve loosely defined the clothing on the figures, and began to add pointillism, one dot at a time, to the sky and the foreground. Here I’ve added more pointillism to the foreground ice, some on the snow in the tree shadows, and I’m adding more definition to the distant mountains. [...]
Now the colors in the painting have all been roughly blocked in. Rough, very rough, but now I can see where I’m going. I chose colors for the figures that would compliment the colors in the landscape. My next move will be to define more carefully the shapes of the snow on the trees, and [...]
A quick application of highlights to the snow on the trees and the foreground snow establishes the values throughout the landscape. I’m still using a flat application of paint at this stage. The pointillism technique will happen as I’m developing detail. My next step is to select colors and paint the two figures in the [...]
At this stage of the painting I begin to add the tree line along the distant mountain peaks paying careful attention to light and shadow. More tomorrow, Gail Niebrugge, Landscape Painter
At this stage of the painting I begin to establish the dark and light (shadows and sunlight) areas of the trees. These trees are heavily laden with snow and the time of day is late afternoon, the source of light is from the right and the angle of the sun is low. This lighting condition [...]
After laying in solid color in most of the top two-thirds of the painting I begin to add a few dots. I do this to primarily to help determine values (darks, lights, and mid-tones), the colors of the dots will change many times over the course of the painting, but once the values are established [...]
For this painting I’ve changed my approach and blocked in areas of color without using pointillism. Each painting is unique and I do not follow a formula for how to begin. This time I’m using a stretched canvas with only a light coating of Gesso primer, leaving the texture of the canvas quite pronounced. I [...]
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...]