Painting Videos Now Up!

Half Dozen- 12" x 20"- oil,  by Greg Newbold

The landscape painting tutorials I filmed with the Kimball Art Center are now up on YouTube. The painting contest for grades K-12 goes from now until November 17th, 2013. Students can upload their paintings to the Kimball Art Center site here. I am told there will be prizes. Here is a link to all of the videos.


The lighting was not as bright as I had hoped, but it was done in house on a budget and overall, I like the results. The information I share will be very helpful if you have beginners in your house or if you just want to check out how I painted this one. Disclaimer: the final painting was finished up in oils since I will be sending it to my gallery.

Home of the Brave Gets Hooked

If you make good art for long enough, it is inevitable that someone either outright steals your artwork, or that you get requests to use your artwork in ways that were were unwanted or unexpected. For example, I have had people actually ask if they could tattoo one of my pieces on their body, to which I politely declined permission (I suspect people have done it anyway). So it was refreshing when a year or two ago, I was contacted by Julia Kappler of Towson, Maryland about possibly using one of my pieces. Julia's art form involves using 1/8" to 1/4" wide wool fabric strips to create hooked rugs. She  wanted to use a piece that I painted for a Boys' Life magazine cover story as the the basis for a rug design.

"Rocket's Red Glare" acrylic by Greg Newbold for Boys' Life

Julia assured me that it would not be sold and was just for the challenge and experience. Normally I would not consent, but I was flattered by the offer and curious as to how something like that might turn out, so I gave her permission. I then promptly forgot all about it. Well, a couple of weeks ago, I got an email from Julia along with a photo of her rendition in yarn of my painting. Here is an excerpt from that email describing the project:

"Greetings from Maryland.  I am sure you had given up on hearing from me again, but my rug, inspired by your artwork for “Home of the Brave”, indeed did get finished and is now hanging at the Maryland State Fair which opened yesterday and runs through Labor Day.
A fellow “hooker” sent me these pictures of some of my entries and, since two of them show “our” rug, I wanted to send them to you.  I am thrilled that so many people (including judges) like it.  It took a blue ribbon in its class and then Best “original” (meaning you have to draw it as opposed to using a commercial pattern) award in rug hooking, given by my chapter of rug hooking enthusiasts (ATHA)
... As I anticipated, it was the most difficult rug I have done so far.  It was all hooked with 3/16” and 4/16” strips of wool fabric.  As you can see, the finished project is not as I originally envisioned, but that often happens when you get into the actual process.  Of course I was unable to duplicate your glorious colors, but wool is not paint!  I hope you are not too disappointed.
...Again, thank you for giving your permission for me to use your design.  Just goes to show you never know where your art will end up!
Best, Julia Kappler"

Thanks and congratulation in the victory Julia! I am not disappointed and it is fun to see.  I am sure you spent many more hours on your creation than I did mine. At least this time I DO know where my art ended up!

From A Tiny Kernel

Red Barn- Acrylic on canvas 9" x 12"

Each spring we grow a garden. It was something I admit not liking all that much as a youth. Mostly because I felt like my dad made us do it. The endless sweaty hours of planting and weeding and watering were torture. When it came time to pick the beans, the rows stretched on forever. Imagine my surprise that when I had my own house, I found myself actually wanting to grow a garden. I turned to my dad, the expert gardener, for advice. Never mind that I had been working the family garden plot for years, this time it was different. I was planting MY garden and I wanted to do it right. The garden plot became a thing of pride that I looked forward to each year. I showed it off to my dad and felt the satisfaction of our hard labor. Not to mention the incomparable freshness and taste of home grown veggies. Dad is gone now and my garden expert is now my older brother. He paid more attention than I did I guess and he helps me a lot. As for the actual gardening, I hear the same grumbles and excuses from my kids that I so willingly piled upon my dad. "It's too hot, it's too hard, I hate gardening!" But the kernel is planted and someday, when they have homes of their own, I just know that I'll get that phone call. The one where the voice on the other end asks "Dad, can you help me plant a garden?"

Inventing Color from Black and White Reference

I did this as a demo for my Illustration 1 students to explain how I make the jump to a full color palette when working from black and white reference. I think this is a valuable exercise for any artist as it forces you to think outside of the box instead of relying on whatever colors are in your photo reference. This challenge was probably as beneficial for me as it was for the students. First, I found a photo that I had taken  at the Getty Museum of a Roman sculpture.

I liked the way the light played across the various planes of the head and the structure of his head was appealing. I knew that working from black and white would force me to think about the basics of color so I set a couple of parameters for myself. One was that I would consciously create a temperature shift from light to shadow and that regardless of the colors I chose, meaning that if the light source I defined was cool, I would paint the shadows warm and vice versa.  I would also maintain a strong value pattern from light to dark. Given these guidelines, I also wanted consciously chose colors that I do not normally work with, forcing myself to invent palettes out of my comfort zone.

The results were delightful and surprising. I found myself fully enjoying the experimentation and being excited by the way certain colors looked against others. Although in some respects the color palettes are not natural, I think they are all believable for the reasons I set as parameters from the beginning: the value patterns were maintained and the color temperature shifts from light to shadow. Each of these versions also has its own unique mood as well. This is an oversimplification of the concept of temperature shifts and they can often times be more subtle than what I did here. Creating color studies like these can be valuable in defining what you want to achieve in a particular piece. These head studies are 4" x 5.5" and I took about an hour and a half to paint each one.

Swamp Sunset

Swamp Sunset by Greg Newbold- 8" x 16" acrylic

I just got an email today from a mother telling me how much her children loved Spring Song, the book that includes this image. It's really nice to hear from readers and parents of readers since, for me at least, I don't often get that kind of feedback. In part it read:

My children and I enjoyed Spring Song today and I wanted you to know how much we enjoyed your illustrations.  I've seen your work before and should have recognized it...Thank you for sharing such lovely work.

This reaction is one of the main reasons why I enjoy making a book so much. In recent weeks, I have pulled out and revised some manuscripts that I have written and am gearing up to get another book in the pipeline. Finding a publisher is the hard part, so wish me luck.

Moonlight Serenade- 8" x 16" , acrylic

Here's the companion piece to this one. I think I may have posted it before, but couldn't find the link.

Renaissance Portrait Finished

I just finished up with the portrait project I have been working on. I am really happy with how it turned out. As you can see from previous posts, there is now a lot more detail in the faces and clothes. Last step was to insert the final painting into the panel that I gold leafed and distressed and  then ship it off to my friend Jeff Dinardo.

 He assured me that his significant other would never stumble on this blog, so I feel pretty safe. Now nobody go spoiling it if you know Jeff.  I expect the Christmas morning surprise will be a good one.. I'm thinking it might be fun to do more of these type portraits, so I hope I get a chance sometime.

Part 1 of this project
Part 2 of this project
Part 3 of this project
Gold Leafing of the frame/panel for this project

Renaissance Portrait Progress 3

Lest you think that this project is the only one I have on the table at the moment, never fear. I actually have a number of projects going on, but they are all for a major educational publisher. I am under a non disclosure agreement, so I can't show or talk about them right now. Sometime down the road, I'll show some of that, but in the meantime, I'll show more progress on this little portrait. As you can compare to the last session, I have just about finished up the background and the faces are almost finished now, just a little more modeling and highlights to go. the clothes and hands have a bit further to go, so a couple more days and I think I'll wrap this up. I have another deadline this week, so It'll be tricky to get both of them done. I also have sketches for another project I need to get out before the end of the week as well. Wish me luck!

Part 1 of this project
Part 2 of this project
Part 4 of this project (finish)
Gold Leafing of the frame/panel for this project

Burn Your Bad Work? No, Just Repaint

Yellowstone (after cropping and repainting) 6.75" x 12" - acrylic.

Ever wonder what to do with all those old illustrations laying around your studio? you know the ones that were so specific and had so many dead areas left for type that they are practically useless? I have burned a few bad ones over the years, but rather than torching them all and having the fire brigade on my doorstep, I have started cropping and repainting them. I have a collector friend that has been buying a piece from me every Christmas for the last few years. Last year I pulled out a few candidates for him to choose from and he found one he liked. Well sort of liked. He wanted me to paint out the figure of the hiker. I happily complied and was pleased with the results which I posted earlier here. This got me thinking of how many useless pieces I have laying around. Those paintings that have good elements, but that are not really suitable to hang on your wall, nor are they attractive enough to put in your portfolio or resell.

Here is the painting after I cut it down

I figured I could crop, repaint or collage elements from one of these otherwise bonfire worthy pieces and turn it into something good. There are thousands of hours of work collected in my flat file and it seems dumb to waste these paintings, so I think I'll be doing more of this in the future. This time, I found one that needed some serious cropping and repainting to make it wall worthy.

Tape lines indicate where I wanted to crop

Here is how it looked before I started reworking it and re assembled with it's original parts after. At least half of the picture area was blank because of type restrictions the publisher placed on me. In this new version, the moose got exiled from his habitat since he didn't fit the new vision. Also, the sky got completely revised as did many of the trees and the thermal pool on the left. In the end, a piece that was practically worthless before now will have an honored place on my collector's home office wall.

Woodland Skunk

Woodland Skunk- 9" x 18" -by Greg Newbold

acrylic on canvas 

This week, I got one of those nice surprises in the mail- a royalty check. It was for my book Spring Song, which unfortunately has fallen out of print for the moment. I think the art in this book is actually stronger than the companion book I illustrated called Winter Lullaby, also written by Barbara Seuling. So how did I get a royalty check on a book that is out of print you ask? Well, the anthology rights to the book are still very much active and it was picked up again to be published in a children's reading textbook.Granted, the check was not huge, just a few hundred dollars, but it's always nice to get money when you don't expect it!

A few "vintage copies" of Spring Song are still available here.

New Painting Video Sneak Peek!

I just got  the news that my new painting video "Conquer Your Acrylic Demons is nearing launch. Here's a sneak peek of the YouTube trailer. The piece featured in the video can be seen in this previous post. I'll clue everyone in on where to buy it as soon as it launches.

Filming a Video Tutorial

Devil-Fish- 9" x 9" Acrylic and metal leaf

Last Friday I filmed my first art instructional video. As I mentioned in a post last week, I created a new version of my "Devil-Fish" demo painted in acrylic. We laid down about 5 hours of raw video and it will be edited down to somewhere around three hours of instruction. I go through the process of creating an entire painting and I show how I work along with some tips and tricks.

Getting set up to film. The live camera area was inside the blue tape.

Starting from a sketch I progress through initial washes of color, applying texture, creating a faux distressed gold leaf frame, building up the image layers and putting down final touches. It was a lot of fun as I worked to talk about why I do certain things, and explain what it takes to create a successful painting.The raw footage that I saw was expertly filmed and I think people will get a great view of how I typically work in acrylic.

The working set-up. I could reach for anything 

I needed out of camera shot and bring it into the shot.

I have a few finishing touches to put on the fish for a final shot and maybe a few voice over dubs in order to finish up. As soon as it is put together and launched, I will let you know how you can get your very own copy.