Beach Scene, After Dan McCaw

This painting is taken from a painting in Dan McCaw's wonderful book, A Proven Strategy for Creating Great Art. He confesses in the book that he just made this composition/color study up on the spot. Strategy is a book I look at again and again, and always recommend to my students. You can tell it is cold and rainy here--hence all the indoor painting.

I'd like to share an exercise with you. On the left is my version of a composition by Sargeant, on the right is the original. He completed this sketch on a trip to Morocco in 1880. I enjoyed the composition so much that I did a version of it with warmer tones and a palette knife, rather than using Sargent's cool colors and soft brushwork.

This type of exercise raises the question of forgery... is my version of the original a forgery? Does it only become a forgery if I have tried to reproduce the painting stroke for stroke and color for color, or is just quoting the composition enough? Would it be forgery if I went to Morocco, found the same spot, and painted there? Or would it now be a pilgrimage dedicated to a great painter? Lots of people have painted the Grand Canal in Venice or the same local barn, and some of those paintings look remarkably similar.

Maybe it is only a forgery if I try to pass it off as my own idea, or as a duplicate of the original. Occasionally, people offer to buy these "experimental copies", but I always feel like they are just exercises, not authentic Ann McMillan paintings.

Pears and Persimmons 18 x 24 inches, pastel

The El Camino Art Association in Arroyo Grande invited me to their meeting to do a demonstration. Here is what I came up with. It was a fun demonstration with an audience very interested in pastel and enthusiastic for the way I use the medium. The next day I gave a mini-workshop in the organizer's lovely garden. It was a very fun visit to the San Luis Obispo area.

Strawberries, 8 x 10 inches, oil, available, 800.

I have posted this one before, but just wanted to send it out again because it just received some very nice recognition. Strawberries won a very nice prize from the SmallWorks North America Show at the Greenwich Workshop Gallery in Connecticut. I am glad the Director there likes it as much as I do! When I was painting it, I felt that it is small, but mighty.

Pescadero Triptych, 3 panels, each panel is 24 x 36 inches.

I have been working on this large painting for quite a while now, and still can't decide if I am happy with it, or if it needs more work. I find that my sense of "doneness" fails me when I work in unusually large sizes... it is hard to tell where the overworking point has been reached.

Tangerines, 6 x 6 inches, oil on canvas, available from ebay, starting bid is $150.

CHARLES P. SOVEK
March 23, 1937 – June 8, 2007

I never got to meet Chuck, but his books (amazon link) were among the first I read about being a serious oil painter--I always meant to take a workshop from him, but just heard that it is too late. Mr. Sovek maintained a brilliant Web site as well, which is still up thanks to his kind family. It is one of the most comprehensive sites about painting that I know of. Here is one of his paintings from last spring.

"Back Porch Blossoms"

Avocados, 6 x 6 inches, oil, available on ebay.

Plum Trees, 11 x 14 inches, pastel, available.

Maybe I have been looking at Wolf Kahn paintings a little too much lately, but here is another color experiment/abstract inspired by his work.

Tangerines, 14 x 14 inches, oil, available.

Tangerines just arrived in the market next to my studio. This painting is done as a partner to the previous realism painting Two Pairs. I varied the method this time, though. Two Pears is done with lots of thin glazing, in the best classical tradition. This one is painted much more alla prima.

On another topic, I just returned from the bookstore with a new classical techniques textbook by Virgil Elliot called Traditional Oil Painting: Advanced techniques and concepts from the Renaissance tot he present. The book is dense and data rich--a true pleasure and reference for the scholarly artist, or artistic scholar.