Another Pear - A Test for my SquareMess custom brushes

[DarkOwnt]

Painted this with 2 of my custom "SquareMess" brushes.

The sketch below was painted from memory only (no reference) as a test for the brushes.

[HwyStar]

That’s excellent DO! You have the balancing act handled between realism and painterly!

There are two brownish brush strokes below the stem that the square brush, for my taste, stands out a “teency” bit to much but those are the only two two brush strokes that my mind “sees”.

As a rule now I always wait an hour, come back to the painting and then I create a list of no more than Ten items to fix. If I only find five then cool! I wait until the next day to fix my mistakes. Sometimes I see more. Repaint, then do the same process one more time. I usually never have to go to the third day. If I was that sloppy then the painting is probable a bummer anyway.

Great painting Mate!

Robert

[DarkOwnt]

Thanks Robert! Really liking the power of the custom brushes. Looking forward to doing a proper piece with them!

[DarkOwnt]

"There are two brownish brush strokes below the stem that the square brush, for my taste, stands out a “teency” bit to much but those are the only two two brush strokes that my mind “sees”."

This is interesting as I have been back and forth on this over the past few years. For a quite a long time I didn't want any brush strokes to be viewable then I thought they should be prominent and interesting. Now I am searching for a balance which if I can pull off when a person looks at the work as a whole then brush strokes disappear and instead simply imply form shading and texture, but as soon as one pays attention to any part of the work or looks closely all they'll see are brush strokes. I have a long way to go but my messy brush helps.

on the subject of brush strokes have you looked closely at
http://www.simonstalenhag.se/

[D Akey]

Delicious. From your head is impressive. Great memory. . . or you eat a lot of pears.

[HwyStar]

This is interesting as I have been back and forth on this over the past few years. For a quite a long time I didn't want any brush strokes to be viewable then I thought they should be prominent and interesting. Now I am searching for a balance which if I can pull off when a person looks at the work as a whole then brush strokes disappear and instead simply imply form shading and texture, but as soon as one pays attention to any part of the work or looks closely all they'll see are brush strokes. I have a long way to go but my messy brush helps.

I agree with everything you have said. Right now, my eyesight is such that I paint 80% of the time with my glasses off so that my eyes are naturally blurred. This helps me to not be able to study the fine details that those brush strokes can show up as. When I clean up the painting using my list I put my glasses back on for the fine details.

I do love the Square Canvas 2 custom brush (at 34% grain) when blocking in the paintings; to get the values correct. It blends so nicely. Better than the oil brush can blend to get that painterly feel to it. I think Chad Weatherford, and I know Daniel Ibanez both use the SC2 custom brush.

I have seen Simon's webpage before. He is a total master! The brush strokes are there but the image overwhelms you enough that you don't want to see the strokes. Brillant work!

Thanks again for sharing a great pear work DO!