Portraits v. Landscape v. Still Life? - Page 7

ReNae Stueve · 02-01-2003, 11:43 PM

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

Elizabeth Schott · 02-01-2003, 11:45 PM

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!

Steven Sweeney · 02-03-2003, 08:40 AM

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.

Elizabeth Schott · 02-03-2003, 09:53 AM

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

Michele Rushworth · 02-03-2003, 11:14 AM

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

Leslie Ficcaglia · 02-03-2003, 02:21 PM

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!

Chris Saper · 02-03-2003, 08:26 PM

Steven,

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

Steven Sweeney · 02-03-2003, 08:59 PM

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.

Patt Legg · 02-04-2003, 05:46 AM

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.

Carolyn Ortiz · 02-04-2003, 10:39 AM

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!