Hmmm, what an interesting thread. I just joined the forum and I'm still exploring all the sections. This topic struck me because I'm one of the minority who is a portrait and landscape painter, but not a still life painter.

I don't like to keep doing the same thing over and over again. I hate routines. For me, going back and forth between portraits and landscapes is refreshing, liberating, and joyful. Portraits take a lot more concentration and focus, especially when one is getting the likeness just right. So after all that intensity I just have to break out and do an expansive, fun painting. I enjoy painting land forms, water, trees, architecture, clouds, the works. I've been flying in helicopters and single-engine planes to take reference photos for very large (36 x 64 sometimes) aerial views of the Philadelphia cityscape and landscapes of the Maine coast and islands. Painting these aerial views keeps me busy all winter. Between the portraits, of course!

As for still life, I realized that I often incorporate still life into portraits. In fact, I get fired up about painting flowers or porcelain or glass or whatever when it is part of a composition. It's just that I, personally, find painting just a still life boring. No offense to the majority here who do enjoy it. I love looking at still life paintings, I just don't like to paint them.

Thanks to the person who started this topic. I never stopped to think about it before.

Alex

Dear Allan,
 

You dog you! Making me post my lousy landscape next to a Corot. :)

Anyway, your angle certainly gave me a push in the right direction, so thanks for that. Even before I saw the Corot's, I thought a lot on what you said with the two colors, and actually went back a lot to the subject without colors and easel, just to sit and see. The first day I was up there, the weather was extremely clear, and there was no aerial perspective at all, but the day after your last comment there was, and here is the result with a lot of yellow ochre and cerulean blue mixed with ultramarine violet that really made the ochre sing.

Something else happened which I have to share with you: I got an exhibition in a very prestigious gallery in Rome in September! :sunnysmil

Now, if that is not great news, I don't know.

All the best

Mikael

Congrtatulations on your upcoming gallery show in Rome. Wish I could be there to see it!

Dear Mikael,
I am so happy for your luck in Rome, congratulations with the show.

About the two colors, that is a theory that I

Mikael and Allan, thanks for showing your landscapes. They are wonderful. Linda, can we see some images of yours? It is very exciting that a gallery picked up on them so quickly. And congratulations on your commission. I am always curious to see the work of other artists who do portraits and landscapes.

By the way, I also do not put people in my landscapes. I think I like the feeling of looking into a scene and imagining myself there. If I see other people already in the scene, then the space "within" the canvas seems to belong to them.

Alex

Dear Allan,
 

Yes, normally it would, but these trees are almost the same distance away. They are right in front of one another. The top one (the pines) are darker in foliage then the ones at the bottom, and therefor look bluer if you will in the shadow.

Best,

Mikael

Some of my work
 

Here is one of my portraits and two landscapes. If they don't post I'll try again.

Two colors
 

Dear Mikael, and all others,

Here comes some details from a painting, a portrait of my garden.
I often find details more interesting than the whole thing, and also have a theory on why !

Why, is because the detail is not limited to it

What Lovely details, Allan. The paint is lucious! I would like to see the whole thing, too. Even though it is less interesting to you, it is interesting to me because I need to see the whole thing to appreciate the details in context. Also, the relationship of the details to the whole is informative because it answers the question: "How did he DO that?"
When I look at other artists' work I always like to know, if you are willing to share the information.

Alex

Dear Allan,
 

[QUOTE=Allan Rahbek]Dear Mikael, and all others,

Here comes some details from a painting, a portrait of my garden.
I often find details more interesting than the whole thing, and also have a theory on why !

Why, is because the detail is not limited to it