Some paintings….landscape and wildlife.

Some readers didn’t realize the paintings displayed on this blog were done by the blog owner.  Me.  I have been a landscape/wildlife painter for over 30 years and have  taught classes.  I do know those who are self-taught usually are passionately bound up in the process of painting.  Why else would you stumble around an easel for frustrating years?  And yes, a class can give some direction.  For many beginning painters.  But many of us, we are off milling our own wheat. Sitting our butts down and watching someone paint is agony.   I think many teachers are insensitive to the fact that people learn in different ways.  Some can read and look at pictures and come away as confused as before.  Some need a naked model before they can paint body parts…But most just need a pad of good watercolor paper and some paint.  Doodling large shapes, just having ‘fun’ with what develops can be as inspiring as sitting in a hard chair.  I’ve been asked to do a video for beginning watercolor painters, and am thinking about it. Just at the thinking stage.  I don’t know. My hat’s off to anyone who plays around with paint and then falls into it.  And what is this garbage of painting is ‘relaxing?”  Aggggghhhhh~  It should be but I’ve missed that stage.  Each piece of heavy white watercolor paper brings its demons with them into the room to frustrate and irritate.  That is what is behind the old story of “fear of that blank page”.  LOL!

The paintings below are mine.

Lady Nyo

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(this last painting was done from a photo of an Italian Landscape, from a cook book!  One of the problems with photography is the flattening out of dimensions and so you have to ‘think in the round’ a bit and add color.  This turned out pretty good but I had to really think.

Some of these aren’t displayed well, but so is much of life.

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These are obviously of some wildlife.

(This last painting I will have to iron or figure out some way to straighten out the creases.  This comes from removing it from a board before it was dry, or some other strange event.  Cats prowl around my easel, so they could be suspects….)

And my personal favorite.  I gave this to a relative who obviously didn’t like it, hung it on a closet louvered door, where it fell  and lay in the dust under a bed for a few years.  I found  and brought it home and hung it (fixed) in my bedroom.  I used it for the cover of “Song of the Nightingale”.  One less cover I had to paint.  Now, that’s relaxing. LOL!

(And Thanks to Nick Nicholson in Australia for the photographing of these paintings.)

Jane Kohut-Bartels

Copyrighted, 2018