MAG Artist’s Blog

One of my first successful acrylic paintings — of the old Manassas Courthouse. Ghostly presence……

MAG enters the 21st Century of Web 2.0!

Tonight was the Manassas Art Guild art critique night.  This was the first meeting we have had since November and it was good to get together and show off art, talk about the upcoming spring art events that are planned, and just plain enjoy each others company.  Please click on the thumbnails to see the art work that we brought together to discuss.

This impressionist 15 x 22 Watercolor of San Diego’s Balboa Park was finished on Christmas Day. I spent a few days looking it over for areas to improve and am finally happy with it. One of the hardest things to do with any medium is to loosen up and paint just enough to convey the correct emotions and feeling of the scene. I did this from a photo I shot during a visit last summer. The quality of the photo and the lighting did not correctly convey the mood I wanted so much of the painting and color choices were done by gut feeling and memory. Sometimes, painting what you want to see works better than painting what you actually see.

I also spent a good deal of care preserving the skips and other white spaces, which I think add character to any painting. Lastly, I used an 8B pencil to add some intense contrasting dark lines and hard edges.

Rob

Welcome to the Manassas Art Guild Artist’s Blog. Hopefully, this will become a place for the artists of MAG to post articles, artworks and anything else they would like to share.

This is the first post of this Blog and hopefully will not be the last.

Shane C. Williams
President, Manassas Art Guild
swilliams@manassasartguild.com