Blue-Green Door

This week I decided to get a bit rusty. As my friend and watercolor coach said, “Of course, every watercolor artist loves to paint rust and old wood.”

There’s just something about how rusty metal and old wood seem to inspire me to paint and sketch. Maybe it’s because I’m a history enthusiast and seeing old things rotting and rusting away makes me want to wish those old items could talk and tell their stories.

Take the Blue-Green Door here for example. This photograph was taken by a fellow I follow on FaceBook who goes by Finius the Skinniest on Quartzite Happenings. Read the rest of this entry

KeithShafer

World Watercolor Month is in the can! It’s done, finished…over…

Crape Myrtle

As I mentioned back in July in my article Quantity-Quality-Or Both, participating in challenges such as World Watercolor Month gives me an opportunity to produce a number of watercolor sketches—quantity. As I reviewed them this weekend I noticed that, as I thought, some were higher quality than others.

I also noticed that as I got closer to finishing the month, quality seemed to go down…until that LAST painting. My first painting last month for World Watercolor Month was the Crape Myrtle on the left.

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KeithShafer

One of Two-Wet on Wet vs Wet on Dry

This week I spent some time working on sky studies. Clouds and sunsets, colors and techniques to improve my landscapes.

Prompted by World Watercolor Month for clouds last week, I decided to spend more time getting to know skies a bit more. After all, I’ve spent a lot of time up there and I certainly have seen some beautiful skies.

Two of two Wet-on-Dry

Steve Mitchell, The Mind of Watercolor, had a good tutorial on clouds the other day working in both wet-on-wet and wet-on-dry techniques. As you can see in these to photographs each has its own merits depending upon the affect I’m trying to achieve. Naturally I didn’t want to waste the paint and time so what do we to with two cloud/sky studies? We add a landscape of course!

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KeithShafer

The union oyster house Boston 11 x 14 cold press watercolors by Matthew Mc

After several weeks of World Watercolor Month #worldwatercolormonth, it’s time to get serious about painting. Now…don’t get me wrong, I’ve been very serious and taken my time and done my best on many of my paintings, but…

When I see a painting like this, The Union Oyster House, by Matthew Mc I realize I still have a long way to go when it comes to composition, value, and color in my work. As I mentioned in my post Quantity-Quality-Or Both, I’ve been pumping out a quantity of art, especially this month, to practice and learn but once this month is over I’ll need to concentrate on quality. Read the rest of this entry

KeithShafer

First layer…somewhat loose

I thought I’d give everyone a bit of a peek behind the curtain this week when it comes to my paintings and sketches.

On the right is my first layer of a painting I did for #worldwatercolormonth sponsored by www.doodlewash.com, whose daily prompt was “Blossoming”. As this is a “loose” painting, meaning I’m not trying to make it a photo-quality work, I used a large quill brush on 300# cotton paper. The idea is to just get a rough outline of the subject.

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KeithShafer

Pink Crape Myrtle

I like to experiment with different techniques of pen & ink. Recently I bought a dip pen with several nibs and went to work on a couple of botanical studies.

On the Pink Crape Myrtle painting to the left I penciled in the overall outline before going to the pen & ink. Usually when I’m using a fountain pen I tend to just draw out the sketch without first penciling in the outlines.  Freely inking the sketch forces me to concentrate more as I draw my subject. Read the rest of this entry

KeithShafer

Photo and work in progress

Is quantity, quality, or is both that are important when it comes to learning to paint with watercolor or sketch with pen & ink?

Learning a craft is much like playing a sport—to get good at it, one must practice, practice, and practice some more. Sports legends like Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, and Tiger Woods spent hours, days, and years practicing their sport to get to the level they have all achieved. Read the rest of this entry

KeithShafer

The motto of this blog is: “Just Write”. I chose that motto because it has been my observation when it comes to writing that to Just Write is the foundation for any successful writer. Advice from numerous successful writers led me to that phrase and cuts to the chase, as it were, about what one needs to do to become a successful writer.

Along the same lines I recently stumbled upon a TED Talk by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love, where she discusses the unseen force that gives writers and other artists the ability to reach the pinnacle of their chosen art. In a nutshell, she tells her listeners the job of a writer, or any other artist, is to Just Do the Work. By that she means a true professional will sit down at their word processor, typwriter, or legal pad each day and spend time doing the work required to write a short story, novel, or screenplay. In the course of doing the work a divine spirit, muse, or talent from within will take the writer to a state which produces works worthy of the writer. Read the rest of this entry

KeithShafer

According to an article I read recently I wasn’t born to be writer. The article was written by a teacher, more specifically a  college professor, who taught creative writing and literature to young minds seeking a master’s degree in the “fine arts”.

According to this learned individual my chances of success in becoming a writer is quite bleak since I didn’t aspire to become a writer at a young age; nor did I follow the hallowed path of college and a liberal arts education immediately after high school. In his humble opinion there is little to no chance of me, or my kind ever becoming “real” writers. Read the rest of this entry

KeithShafer

I picked up a copy of Let’s Write a Short Story by Joe Bunting not long ago because I believe, as do the author and John Gardner, author of On Becoming a Novelist, writing short stories is a great way to break into writing novels.

I’ve just finished reading the introduction of Joe’s book where he challenges his readers to not just read the book, but to Write a Short Story. In fact, he asks his readers to write a blog with “Let’s Write a Short Story” as the heading; which is the genesis of this week’s blog. Read the rest of this entry

KeithShafer