ColorChat: "Wild Sycamore", 36 x 48

I love painting simple, intimate, close-up views of my subjects, eliminating the nonessential and focusing on my primary interest. This painting is the first of a series created from elements taken from numerous photos of cow creek, near Smithwick, Texas in the fall. (Cow creek is a beautiful place, one of my special personal sanctuaries.) The ripples on the water in the background are coming from a little waterfall trickling into a small, but fairly deep pond on the creek. I love the variety and contrast of colors in the autumn leaves of the many sycamores surrounding this pond.

Train Your Brain

Inside each of our skulls, we have a double brain with two ways of knowing. As each of our hemispheres gathers in the same sensory information, each half of our brains handles the information in different ways. Left-brain functions are logical, analytic and verbal, while right-brain functions are visual, spatial, intuitive, creative and non-verbal. Today, educators are increasingly concerned with the importance of intuitive and creative thought. Nevertheless, school systems in general are still structured in the left-hemisphere mode. The right brain goes largely untaught. Half a brain is better than none, but a whole brain would be better.
Gaining conscious access to the right-brain mode of thinking is vital to learning to draw (and create art), but it has implications for the field of education in general as well. People from diverse fields of knowledge, when aware of the full functional potential of both sides of their brains, can enhance both thinking modes, thereby increasing their personal growth.

Betty Edwards
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
(paraphrased)

Plein Air Paintings

The works below were created outside in the open air, where the artist heads to learn from the greatest landscape teacher of all, nature itself. Painting outdoors helps one develop a sensitivity to nature and a visual memory that will inform studio works. Plein air paintings are usually small and have a spontaneous quality about them because the artist must work quickly. There are only about two hours before any given scene will change dramatically because of the moving sun and resulting changes in shadow and light patterns.

ColorChat

"Wild Sycamore", 36 x 48

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