Reflections painting

Using photography, collage, tapestry, and video, Erin M. Riley, Leah Schrager, Alexa Meade, and more reveal the meanings of self-representation today.

Inspired by Virginia Woolf's words in the title, this painting is a contemplation on compassion. Image is of a hand delicately touching water. A painterly reflection of the hand is portrayed in the water's ripples.

This is an oil painting I did over Thanksgiving holiday at my parents house. I was assigned to do a painting of someone's reflection painted in an analogous color palette. I had a few different ideas all with children that I was thinking of doing. Here is one of my sketch book pages: I chose to do a little girl scrutinizing and admiring herself in a mirror. I painted it in a yellow analogous palette (the color is not showing up perfectly in the photo but it's close). My four-year-old sister…

Vienna, Austria based artist Martin C. Herbst embraces distortion in his paintings, spanning from flat, wavy, and convex surfaces to the rounded shapes of stainless steel spheres. In his ongoing series on folded aluminum, Herbst presents classical portraiture in a new and unconventional way. This body of work is in part inspired by Mannerism, specifically the work of Mannerist painter Parmigianino, whose style emphasized elongated proportions and highly stylized poses with no clear…

You will barely believe your eyes at the sharp paintings by Simon Hennessey from Birmingham, UK. He capitalizes on reflections in sunglasses to portray

This blog along with the previous 4, and the next 22 are designed specifically for the Plein Air Adventure class to go along with the demonstrations I do before each class. The info works just as well for studio paintings. First, study the scene. I usually do a quick value sketch of the scene as a way to study it. What I'm looking for is the edge where the darkest dark meets the lightest light-otherwise known as the focal point. Here' the waterline is the darkest dark with tree trunks on the…

Once again, you, dear entrants, have made judging the Beautiful Bizarre Art Prize an incredibly difficult task! We have received many excellent entries from countries all over the world and our Jury Panel have the huge task ahead to pick the winners. Last year, we felt that there were SO many spectacular entries, we expanded from 25 Finalists in this category to 35. This year, we are expanding this again to 50 Finalists within the Traditional Art category! This year has seen a significant…

"A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing...

How To Paint Reflections in Water Reflections are beautiful but they can be tricky for the beginner to paint effectively. It requires the artist to really look at the reflections they are painting. I’m including some photos from a recent trip to Florida that has some beautiful reflections. I’ll point out some things the beginning […]