Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Street Scenes





Sunlight on the Corner, 2006, Oil on Panel, 18x24

I must be brief today as I am off to Woodstock for my figure drawing class. I plan on doing some drawing and am also taking along my underpainting supplies just in case I feel like I want to start a painting. I am still feeling a bit rusty as far as drawing the figure goes, so I may just focus on that again this week. We'll see.

"Sunlight on the Corner" is the most complicated painting I have done in years! I have simplified the elements greatly, but it does still retain many details which, unfortunately are difficult to discern in a reproduction. I really enjoyed working on it, but it took days and days and kind of threw off my whole painting schedule. Which, normally would be ok, but aagghhh, I have so much work to do! Anyway, I painted it in sections, and each day that I sat down to work on it, I was worried that my "feel" would be different. However, that didn't really turn out to be a problem, thankfully. I am also trying to finish up another street scene that has a similar look to it and I plan to enter both pieces into our local arts organization's annual national juried show. I am breaking my rule of not entering shows that require slides by entering this, but it's important to me to support local arts organizations. Naturally, I am cutting it close, the entry deadline is May 1, so I need to finish up the other painting, get images shot and send jpegs out to the lab and get them back, meaning there will probably be an extra fee for a faster delivery.

Well, this all keeps the adrenaline going anyway.


Two close ups of "Sunlight on the Corner", alas, they look a bit blurry:



8 comments:

Anonymous said...

love that painting!! Doesn't look blurry to me.....maybe it's my eyes!?!

Tracy Helgeson said...

Hi Mom, Thanks, I thought the first close-up looked blurry, the other one is better.

Tracy Helgeson said...

Thanks, Shan, for the compliment!

Anonymous said...

Hello again Tracy

I'm really loving your blog and I think this painting is terrific. The figures work wonderfully well and the colours are so vibrant.

In a previous post you describe how you used to be a slave to detail and 'realism', but then you reached a point where you wanted more. That is exactly how I am feeling right now but I am sort of stuck at the moment.

Do you still do pastel work or do you concentrate on oils?

[just as an aside ... I have 4 children too but all 'growed up']

william wray said...

Very Nice. Do you know Edward Seago's work? He's got a fantastic way to shorthand figures.

Tracy Helgeson said...

Hi Lesly, I am glad you are enjoying the blog.

It's definitely a challenge to let go of detail and realism, if that's your goal. For me it really helped to work with different subject matter and/or medium. I putter around once in awhile with pastels, but unfortunately don't have enough time or space to really focus on it right now. Someday.....

Tracy Helgeson said...

Thanks William, I am not familiar with Seago, although I did look him up. Nice enough landscapes, I liked the moodiness in many of them, but I didn't see any that had figures, or least any that I could make out on the screen.

Tracy Helgeson said...

Thanks Bill, after reading your comment, somehow I am now picturing a bumpersticker from the seventies :-) !!