Depending on the view, it is sometimes possible to paint something you can see looking out one of your windows. It can include a window sill and curtains, or even a small vase on the window sill. Then you don't have to be bewildered by an overdose of the great outdoors.

Just a suggestion.

Landscapes
 

Have you ever noticed that people that paint very nice stills or figures or interiors or portraits often paint odd landscapes. The reverse is often true. Artists that make great sunlit landscapes can't even do a portrait. This has gone on for centuries.

Those folks like Richard Schmid and Dan Gerhartz that paint from life-stuff is stuff and all their work is convincing. I love much of Daniel Graves work but find his landscapes a bit weird in tone and lacking in light. If landscapes don't have light or depth they seldom work.

I suspect studio folks don't get outside enough.

It is said..
 

by devoted landscape people to paint snow; your feet must be cold. I painted this sketch standing in water for a class demo.

I am more of a still life painter than landscape artists. I do have a special fondness for trees though, since I always seem to see a face in them. Odd, huh?!

Karin, I wish you would post some of your attempts for us new guys. I am dumbfounded that you would struggle. Your struggle would be my masterpiece, and you know I mean that with the utmost respect!

This was my first still life, motivated by Mr. Tim Tyler himself. I was very excited and pleased. The real fun parts were: one the lighting didn

A Good Day Painting Apples
 

I painted the apples today in a single pass - a very good and exciting day! The rest is still very much in progress. :)

Thanks for looking!

Michael,

They look so good, you want to bite right into one.

Someone should put a stop to this before somebody gets hurt.

A pear ently this is going to continue ...

It's Still Life for me
 

My first love is still life. I do think of it as portraits of onions.

Here is my last one
 

It's a food thing

Here is one

Ah, the Master

Depending on the compositions they favor, many portrait artists also have to be good at rendering still life objects and landscapes. The objects in the background of Nelson Shanks' portrait of Princess Diana's brother or the landscapes that are part of Allan Banks' portraits come to mind.

Beth
 

How did you post such a huge perfect image? That's always been my favorite Renoir.

Here's a still from a guy that is famous for painting women. -Thayer

Oh Tim, I just re-painted the whole thing last night and took a digital of it with my new found photography skills! ;)

I love that still life, can you post one of his women?

Seriously, I have found the most important thing to look for when searching for a painting or artist, is not the artist's name, or the painting's name but the Gallery, Collection or Museum's name. They will consistently have the largest jpg files that you can download without copyright. I am sure you have found if you try and blow up a small one they really look nasty.

Wanted to add, Mike, that I love the pear, and Michael did your delicious apples get thrown from Enzie's tree? ReNae, where are your images?

National Gallery?
 

Beth I think the National Gallery has several of his works large. Maybe AskArt.com?

No seriously
 

How did you post that large image? I've been trying to post a still life, but since it's in landscape orientation the 400 wide format makes it a postage stamp. Reducing the resolution to 79 lost all the detail. I had to dump it.

Pastel Still
 

An old pastel. Before I fell in love with oils.

ReNae,

Try not lowering the resolution. What's the web going to do when monitors can display more than 72 and 92 dpi?

A one day fun thing
 

I've got 12 citrus trees. All kinds of fruit, so I never run out of still life, life.

Tim, the Luncheon hangs at the Phillips Collection Museum in DC I believe. To get the really large reproduction I went to: artgazebo.com
Of all places. They sell prints with frames, but they seem to have the best looking reproductions on the web. Another one is the globalgallery.com
If you really enjoy Renoir and the Impressionists, Barnes & Noble Books publishes
"The Impressionists" by Gabriele Crepaldi, which is the best I have seen.

Oh Cynthia you are so right, it is going to be so nasty! I am already an offender of resaving jpegs, thus killing bits of information each time!

ReNae, that is one thing you should make sure you are not doing. Do not open a jpeg file and re-save it with changes as a jpeg file. Each time you do that it loses information. You should save it as a .tiff or .psd, then when you are ready to post on the web, open and save your updated document as a jpeg.

Another thing you might be doing is lowering your resolution and not changing your pixels to the width restriction of 400 at the same time. This is extremely important, especially as I mentioned above. If you save a jpeg as a 72 dpi file then try to make the width larger it is trying to make 2 scrambled eggs out of one. There will be no yellow! Think in little squares that you can take away but not add.

I mean this in the nicest way. Please know I have 5 Macs on a network and have worked on them for years. I strongly suggest, no matter what computer you use, if you don't feel it is your life's calling to become computer literate go buy any of the "For Dummies" books. They are great!

Can I play?
 

Cynthia lit a small fire underneath me, leading to a round-the-clock marathon session of downloading software upgrades and drivers and such for one of my beloved Macs. Suddenly, it appears that I can post images for the first time. This will probably frighten some of you.

So here's a little oil painting, still-life with a branch's worth of landscape thrown in, just to see if this will really show up in this runaway thread without intervention or loud screaming.

Oh my gosh! Is that really a Sweeney Original? Wonderful! :thumbsup:

Spectacular! I recognize many of the "tools of the Chinese scholar."

What a beautiful painting, Steven, and how nice it is to see your work finally! We've seen your face and "heard" your voice but haven't been able to look at your work and it's felt very odd indeed. Now that you've broken the Mac techno barrier I hope we'll see lots more!

Steven,

This is a lovely painting. I especially appreciate the care that obviously went into setting up the composition.

Thanks, folks. This painting has personal significance over and above the fact that I happen to like it, and as happy as I was to cash the check, I wish I still had the painting.

It will perhaps surprise no one that as I look at the image here, I'm ready to critique it, as I can see, all this time later, things that I would still tweak. (Edges and values away from the center of interest, if you're wondering.) Imagine signing off the Forum and shutting down the computer and still having your toughest critic in the room with you. (It's not necessarily a blessing.)

Painted from life, sight-size, with a preliminary charcoal "cartoon" to get everything placed correctly.

;) I have been away for awhile and came and found this thread. Yep ! Thought I'd post one of my still lifes as they are indeed my favorite - after portraits of course.

This is really interesting!

Hmmmm, unfortunately I think I am pretty bad at landscapes and still lifes! Unless of course, like some others, they are incorporated into a scene with figures.

The piece I'm working on right now has vegetation, and plenty of glasses, bowls, and other items on a table, and lots of other surfaces everywhere! And the only thing that really keeps me going is knowing that after I get those areas drawn in I have 4 figures to hop around on. Without them I don't think I'd ever complete a piece of art.

This is another piece I did, very minimal still life... Must be a bit of the ADD!

The actual piece
 

Can never get enough of the figure! So many wonderful faces, so little time! :sunnysmil

Still life and landscape
 

I really enjoy seeing the other types of artwork done by members of this forum. Please keep this thread going!

Jean

Help! There is hardly any room left in my studio. I began my struggle with landscapes once again because I needed something convincing for a portrait background. After I started doing these little studies I've become quite addicted to them and cannot seem to quit.

I think that it is ironic since I was the portrait/still life painter who started this thread because I couldn't do a landscape. And now I'm ready to admit that I need to to find a chapter of "Landscapes Anonymous" near me.

Sometimes I do a couple of these a day just to "loosen up" before I begin work on a portrait. The following pix are a fraction of my first efforts. I've probably painted a hundred of these things so far. Some are good, some aren't.

Yipes Karin--you are definitely on a roll. I love them. Most of them are 8x10's or 12x16's right? Now what does one do with all of these paintings? Where do you have them all? I see most are framed.

Personally, I find that I do the same thing. I get on a roll with miniatures or at least small works for awhile then I bust loose and go to a 30x40 or bigger. Must be the the creativeness going awry. Love it.

Keep it up.

Landscapes
 

This was from my New England trip this fall.

Life
 

Working from life, whether on portraits or still lifes or landscapes - there's a great deal of color out there. On cloudy days the color is really rich because the sun doesn't bleach out the color. You'll notice R. Schmid almost always paints on cloudy days.

Most are 6" x 9" and 8" x 10." Some are 9" x 12" but I like to work small.
Darned if I know...any suggestions? I just got around to taking pix of the framed ones and that is the tip of the iceberg. These little landscapes are stacked all over the studio and around the house. If I can't break my landscape addiction soon, I'll be forced to move into a warehouse.:) Fortunately I've been able to sell a few through two galleries nearby but they can't sell 'em as fast as I can paint 'em. Too bad ebay isn't good for selling paintings...

I'd love to see some of them up close. Can you post a couple of your favorites?

Can you tell me how long it takes you to do one or two of these to loosen up before working on a portrait? (I'd never get around to working on my portraiture if I tried that!)

Thanks!

Karin, work up the walls and across the ceiling and open up your studio as a planetarium or IMAX landscape theater. Charge what the market will bear. I'll buy the first ticket. (Remember, the big profits are in the popcorn and the watered-down soft drinks.)

With this kind of work, though, your biggest problem would be getting people to leave after the credits roll. (That and the floors sticky with spilled pop.)

Landscape #1