R. Davies Art

This oil painting of a whiskey glass conveys American iconography at its finest! It carries such freight. From westerns to rough and tumble city bars to whisky pubs in Brooklyn, it conveys a welter of meanings! Temptation, celebration, contemplation, quiet times after a hard day, loss, struggle. Life. This painting is 5x7 inches, oil on board.  SOLD

When people think of the how of painting, the direct method of painting is what many people assume most painters use, and this is largely the case for most abstract and much of realist painting. The indirect method is currently making a comeback, and I may discuss it in another post. For now, the direct method, which seems simple, but if done well, is surprisingly complicated. To start, you may or may not have an underdrawing, tone, or underpainting, but you will have a series of brush strokes that are as precise as possible. The paint will be mixed to the exact hue and value--shade, tint, tone--lifted from the palette with the exact size and shape brush needed for the expected mark and deliberately applied by dragging the color on the tip of the brush, not the bristles across the desired area. The artist may twist the brush, press to fan it out, or manipulate it in some other way to get the exact brush shape desired to make the exact mark. If the mark is incorrect or inarticulate, i...

Today, I use my painting of Crystal to talk about the emotional content of a portrait. Anyone with a modicum of effort can get a reasonable likeness. I firmly believe that. But it is the composing and editing of the vast amount of information that makes a painting feel like it has captured a subject's inner life. This can only be done by careful observation--that is standing back and seeing what the painting says at any one moment. Does your most recent mark head you towards a coherent understanding of this person's inner life or does it head away? This takes practice and it cannot be taught. Some people are simply insensitive to composition and to subtle changes in emotional feel when painting. I know, that sounds mean, but it is simply a fact. Now, I don't mean that a viewer who cannot paint the emotion before them cannot see the emotion when presented by someone who can. Of course they can. That is what makes us human. In this image, I see a very concerned woman wh...

This is a work that started as a pencil sketch. I stood on the curb and sketched this simple view and then snapped many photos, bracketing the exposure to replicate (as closely as possible) the look of the shadows and highlights. It is entirely possible to capture the look of a scene very accurately with a simple camera on a phone as long as you can control exposure in specific areas. On my iPhone, I can essentially change the exposure infinitely (I say that that advisedly as my physics friends would really spank me on that assertion). I change the exposure for, say, the street. I take the photo then immediately check it against what I see in front of me. If it is off, I delete it, adjust the exposure, and take another. I repeat this process for each area. I took a photo with the exposure of the pale yellow area of the building in mind. I took one of the lower part of the sky and one of the middle and one of the upper. I took one of the brightly lighted orange area of the building, a...