Painted Pony (small daily painting for sale)

Painted Pony
Mark Nesmith
Oil on canvas board
5"x7"
2012
Click here to bid on this painting.

Living in a small, rural town can be a bit of an adjustment after living in a major metropolitan area like Dallas for more than a decade, but I'm loving the slower and easier pace of life down here. My brother has a few acres with a bit of woods and a little pond. One of my brothers' neighbors is the local veterinarian who has plenty of animals including horses and donkeys. I've spent lots of time sketching and taking pictures of the horses as they graze near the fence line. Before this summer I'd never really drawn horses, and had rarely painted or drawn any animals at all. In fact most of my sketches of animals were done more than a decade ago back in college. I used to take my sketchbook with me to the Houston Zoo and sketch the animals there. This small canvas was one of the first paintings I finished this summer after moving back down here. I'm really pretty happy with this painting. There's a lovely range of reddish brown hues that really pop against the bright green grass. I think I'll have to paint a few more horses soon.

Finally...I'm setup again and ready to sell some artwork!

"Scruffy"
Mark Nesmith
Oil on Canvasboard
5"x7"
Click here to bid on this painting.

Since I've been back to work steady in the studio, the small daily paintings are starting to build up again.  Now that I've finally gotten my website, blog, banking, and eBay accounts all current and switched over with my new info I'm ready to start clearing out some work! I'll be listing new daily paintings along with some of the older small canvases I still have left.  I'm starting with my recent painting "Scruffy" that I posted just last week.  This is a 5" x 7" oil painting on canvasboard of a scruffy little dog I saw at the gas station before work one morning. Hope you enjoy and thanks as always for your support!

Day 3 and 4 Heavy clouds and rain painting

I've started laying in the clouds with lots of dark green and blue hues. Ive only been getting to work on this one a couple of hours each day but I'm making goid progress I think. I'm generally working from the dark to the light right now and just trying to get a layer of color on the whole canvas. Once I've accomplished that, I'll work over the top with glazes, scumbles and some more juicy, thick opaque brushwork. I'm getting pretty excited about this one and hope I can approach the image I have in my mind.

New Daily Oil Painting "Scruffy"

I stopped at the gas station before work and this scruffy little dog caught my attention. He walked right up, sat down and seemed to pose just waiting for me to take his picture. I snapped a couple with my phone before he took off. It was still dark so the pictures are pretty grainy and have awful color. As I worked on this painting during my lunch break today I did a bit of inventing (as usual.) I mainly wanted to capture his scruffy, disheveled yet somehow poised appearance, kind of reminds me a bit of "Lady and the Tramp." Guess I need to find a Lady to paint to keep him company. This is an oil painting on a 5"x7" canvas board.

Bold Brush Painting Contest

My recent oil painting "Evensong" is in the Bold Brush contest this month. Please follow the link to the Bold Brush page and click "like" and help me make the initial cut. Thanks!

http://faso.com/boldbrush/painting/44672

Day 2 of working on my new painting (with a nod to J.M.W. Turner)

I managed to put in a couple of hours at the easel after work yesterday and started to lay in the rest of the sky area beneath the clouds and the dark mass of the tree line at the bottom. This canvas measures around 3' by 4' so I'm taking my time. Slow and steady wins the race.

I've always loved paintings of clouds and storms, but I often think people resort too much to shades of grey when picturing rain. I find the light during a summer afternoon thunderstorm to be vibrant and have an erie luminescent glow. I think J.M.W. Turner was perhaps the best at depicting storms. His often seemed almost completely abstract, made up of radiant swirls of color. Somehow he still managed to capture the threat and foreboding atmosphere at the same time. I'm hoping to capture a bit of those qualities in this painting.

New oil painting on my easel (Rain Storm Day 1)

I've been under the weather the last couple of days, but I've had this painting of a rainstorm in my head for awhile now so I just had to get started. It doesn't look like much right now but I'm oddly pleased with it so far, particularly the hint of blue sky poking through at the top.

I'm planning to post my progress on this painting over the next week or so and maybe give a few ideas about my techniques and process for those of you interested in that sort of thing. This will be mainly clouds with just the barest hint of a tree line at the bottom edge of the canvas. Right now it borders on the abstract. I toned the canvas with a bit of burnt sienna and drew in the basic shapes in pencil.

I don't always start on a toned canvas, and I don't always start with a drawing. I don't exactly have a specific formula for my work. I will sometimes leave the white gesso instead, especially on my smaller paintings, but I do prefer to lay down a colored ground first and i usually like to have some kind of drawing to start, either in pencil or charcoal or occasionally thinned paint. Toning a canvas is an old tradition in oil painting, but for me it actually goes back to my years of painting in soft pastels on colored paper. The bit of color underneath kind of unifies the painting and adds a shimmering depth to colors when allowed to show through a little.

Tomorrow iI'll probably lay in a bit of the trees at the bottom and the darker masses of the clouds. Stay tuned...

I'm giving away a painting!

First off, a very heartfelt thanks to all of you who havebeen so supportive of my artwork.  Manyof you have become followers and “liked” my Fan Page (www.facebook.com/marknesmithstudio),and so many of you have always been gracious with your comments andappreciation of my paintings.  It’s beenabout a year since I was really promoting my work online, and those of you who know mepersonally know what I’ve been dealing with during that time, but I’ve decided it’sabout time I get back to the serious business of making a career out of thisart stuff ;-)  In the interest of givingmy online presence a shot of adrenaline I’m resorting to the oldest andgreatest marketing strategy in the book…bribery LOL! 

As a thank you to thosewho support and appreciate my artwork, I’ve decided to give away apainting.  I’ll be entering everyone’sname that subscribes to follow my blog Paint Daily Texas (http://paintdailytexas.blogspot.com) or click like and follow my fan page (www.facebook.com/marknesmithstudio) in a drawing for one of my oil paintings.  If you do both I’ll enter your name twice. Thiswill be an old school style drawing, just names in a hat.    Theprize will be your choice of the 8”x 10” oil paintings pictured here.  I’ll ship the painting in the continental USA for free,or can arrange local pickup if you’re in the area.  (If you’re outside of the country we can worksomething out.)   I’ll pick a winner March 8, 2013 (beginning of mySpring Break) and post the result on my blog. This is in no way affiliated with Facebook or anybody else, just a “thankyou” from me to you.  Please share thiswith anyone and everyone you think would enjoy my art.

"The Rocky Shore"

"The Last Sliver of Light"

"Sunset at Malloy Bridge Road"

"Frosted Fields"

"Hot Day at the Lake"

"Sunrise, Trinity River East Fork Wetlands"

Why I Paint Landscapes

Lately I've had a few people ask me about my work, specifically why I choose to paint so many landscapes. I've found myself trying to put my finger on exactly what it is I want to do with my artwork.  Sometimes landscape artists are kind of dismissed as being merely decorative, but to me a good landscape has the power to make us pause and maybe regain a little of the sense of wonder we lose as we get older and go about our busy days. 

Throughout my life as an artist I have often pursued figurative work and even spent a few years focused on abstraction, but at the end of the day I always seem to be drawn back to the landscape.  The landscape is the vehicle for my emotions.  From the rebirth and hope of a sunrise to the fear of a distant storm on the horizon, the calm contented peace of a lazy afternoon or the sweet sadness and awe I feel as the sun slips below the horizon at the end of the day.  The feeling of being alone and at one with creation lies beneath all of my work.  The lack of people in my landscapes lends a sense of timelessness and isolation, yet I often include subtle aspects that imply a figurative narrative.  Trees and other elements often act as stunt doubles giving a human like presence, sometimes withering and twisted, other times standing tall and graceful against the elements. In many of my paintings this narrative takes the form of the remnants of mans effort being reclaimed by the land:  a fence line long since abandoned and now overgrown, pylons of a washed out pier disappearing into the ocean, small almost imperceptible buildings dwarfed by the sheer vastness and immeasurable power of the world.  They all serve as a reminder that despite all our technology and “progress” all things end up returning to the earth.  We are but a part of the cycle of life.

Sunset

So it's been awhile since I've posted to my blog...divorce will do that to you. But I've finally gotten all of my accounts switched over and setup with my new address and email and all so it's time to get back to work! This painting has been on my easel for a few weeks. I've had more days go by in between painting sessions than I usually like which has led to more scumbling over dry layers than is my usual style, but all in all I'm pretty pleased with it. It's 24" x 30" and is oil on a gallery wrapped canvas. I hope the new owner enjoys it as much as I've enjoyed painting it!

Artist Interview: The Whimsical Realism of Contemporary Painter Brian Burt

"The Joker"
Brian Burt
Pastel on Panel
18" x 24"

Brian Burt has a uniquely contemporary take on the still life genre painted in a somewhat traditional style.  His paintings are imbued with an undeniable sense of humor and joy for the wacky aspects of daily life.  Brian earned his BFA in painting from Miami University in Oxford, OH in 1998.  He then went on to serve a three year apprenticeship at The Atelier School of Fine Arts in Minneapolis.  An incredibly versatile artist, Burt says his goal is not to be labeled a “Figurative Painter”, a “Still Life Painter”, or a “Landscape Painter” but simply a painter of what he sees, whether that’s in front of his eyes or in the back of his mind.  His work was included in the annual “21 Over 31” feature in the November 2009 issue of Southwest Art, and he currently exhibits his paintings at the Cincinnati Art Galleries and The 5^th Street Gallery in Ohio, and at The Artist House Gallery in Philadelphia.                                                                                                                                                                                               

What’s on your easel right now?  Can you tell me about your works 
in progress and how they fit in with your body of work?

Along with what I usually put onto DPW what is on my easel right now are a series of small still lifes with a somewhat different lighting setup than I usually use. These guys are lit from above rather than from the traditional left or right. The objects are varied but I am starting to use book more and more. Usually ones that have interesting spines. The pieces are really built around what is on the cover or spine of the book.

"Song of Solanum"
Brian Burt
Pastel on Panel
24" x 18"

A sly sense of humor is apparent in almost all of your paintings.  Is this just a natural reflection of your personality or something you strive to create?  If I bumped into you on the street for the first time would I walk away thinking you’re a funny guy?

Well, I'm not sure if you bumped into to me you'd find me funny . . . my wife usually just gives me an eye roll for most of my so called humor. I would rather say I'm fairly sarcastic. I like to poke people, gently, to get a reaction that would be out of their norm. I find you really can tell the type of person you're in front of when you get them outside of their emotional work clothes. So my work has a bit of that in it. I am traditionally trained but I try to paint non traditional subjects not only for the viewer but for myself as well, to push me out of the norm and to give me a challenge.

What artists or art movements influenced or affected you?
 

This is a tough one. To be honest it changes from year to year, though the touchstones that have always been with me are a literal eclectic mess of painters. Jean Leon Gerome, French Academic Orientalist, a man with such a mastery of technique that he was able to paint scenes of the Roman Colosseum with gladiators and lions having no possible way of actually seeing them. He was limited only by his imagination. Chuck Close for taking realism in the 60's and pushing it into something new, fresh and wonderfully interesting. Vermeer for having such a wonderful command of color and composition and giving the world of a sneak peek at what his time and studio looked like. Alan Magee, paintings of simple quiet still lifes that seem to resonate with life.



"Young Love"
Brian Burt
Oil on Panel
7" x 5"

You had a very formal education in art, first earning your BFA and then completing an apprenticeship at The Atelier School.  You’ve obviously worked hard to hone your skills as a painter.  Do you recommend young would-be artists follow the “academic” route?  Why or why not?

If you are determined to be a painter there is simply no comparison to a liberal arts degree (traditional art college) and the 8-10 hrs a day M-F of drawing and painting that you get at an "Atelier" based program. When I started searching for one of these in early 2000 there was really only 5-7 schools active in the US, now there are dozens.

You started out painting in oils, then moved to pastels, and then back to oils again.  What is it about the different mediums that you enjoy?  Do you work in different mediums depending on the piece?  Why?

Pastel is straight and pure color mixed on the painting surface, no messing around the with palette, sinking in of dark colors, or drying times. You can get some very fine results pushing the pigment around on the surface. Oils are a different beast though when it comes to color. . .  where you need a full compliment of 300-1000 pastels to really be able to paint anything that is in front of you with oils I have 15 tubes or so of paint. The entire spectrum is right there on my palette. I rarely do pastels anymore,  the occasional commissioned portrait but for the most part it's all oils now. They are cleaner and easier to ship (no glass.) Both are simply tools to interpret and record what's in front of you. IE: pencil, typewriter, or computer for a writer.



"White February"
Brian Burt
Pastel on Panel
5" x 12"

Tell me a little about your creative process.  You seem to easily bounce from figurative work to still life and landscape subjects.  What do you look for in a subject?  Is there an initial spark that ignites you?  Do you ever paint on location or do you mainly use photographs as references?  Do you keep a sketchbook?

For my still lifes 99.9% is directly from life. If you see something hovering or impossibly balanced in one of my pieces it is tied to a string and suspended from my ceiling or glued there. The landscapes are a mixture of plein eir painting and photo reference, and the portraits are usually 99% from photos. I simply don't have a large enough studio to have people come in and sit. The inspiration usually comes from one object that I build a piece around for the still lifes, the landscapes are 100% a gut reaction to what I think looks interesting or beautiful, and the portraits are more or less the same as the landscapes, but I am looking for 'unusual' facial expressions or poses, that makes it different or unique to look at.

What size/scale do you usually work in?  How long do you spend on a 
typical painting?



For DPW the 5x7 and 6x6 formats are the standard. The landscapes and loose figurative work usually goes between 1-2 hrs. The still lifes are a crap shoot. They can go anywhere from 3-7 hrs depending on the subject matter. My other works can get fairly complicated some finished 5x7 still lifeless can take 15-20 hrs, the 8x10's can go up to 40, and the larger pieces can take weeks to finish.



"Green Memories"
Brian Burt
Oil on Panel
7" x 5"

You’re very active in the Daily Painting Movement and show and sell your smaller work on your blog Art4Diapers and the Daily Paint Works site.  What is it about the idea of painting daily that inspires you, and have you found selling these smaller paintings to be beneficial to your career and development as an artist?

DPW and the daily painting movement have been fantastic to me not only financially but also in honing my painting skills. Three years ago when i started  doing daily paintings I was getting back into oils and had still some speed and color issues that I needed to work out. The progression of my work and the level that I am at now could not of been achieved without doing these small pieces. Doing 20-30 larger oils in that time could not have given me the skills and confidence as doing almost 300 smaller pieces in that same amount of time.
Are there times when you can’t be creative or the paint just isn’t flowing?  How do you handle periods of artist block?.



Definitely, I just have to get out of the studio. Read, take rides or walks with my daughter, just do something other than paint. When I come back I find that I have a clear set of eyes and am ready to go again. I am not a fan of nose down grind your way through it, this attitude is for manual labor (which many of the jobs in and out of college I had to do.)

How do you know when a painting is finished?  Is it sometimes hard 
for you to decide a work is complete?



With the more painterly pieces I simply stand back and ask myself if it is conveying the scene or idea concisely and clearly (ie: a quote or a poem,) With the more tightly painted pieces I stand back and ask myself "Is this believable?" I am not going for photo realism but I am going for a sense of reality within the confines of the panel. (ie. a well written description of a scene that doesn't include how many leaves are on the tree or scratches in the wood on the table.)

"Last Bit of Light"
Brian Burt
Pastel on Panel
5" x 12"

What support do you like to paint on?  Do you prepare and prime 
your own canvas or panels?  Do you use any particular painting mediums 
(damar, linseed oil, liquin, alkyd gel, etc.)?

I almost exclusively use Ampersand Gessoboard, though at times I do prepare my own supports on Ampersands hardboard or 1/4 MDF primed with 3-5 coats of sanded gesso.

What do you think makes the difference in becoming established as 
an artist, and what advice do you have for young and emerging artists 
looking to develop a career?

My two cents is that you need to learn about as many techniques and materials as you can to form your own artistic toolbox. You can study with this guy or read a book on painting by the lady but if this is all you know then you can never hope to anything more than a cheap carbon copy of that which you have attached yourself to. Once you are technically competent all of the painting issues like loose or tight, big or small, heavily or thinly become background noise to the overall question of "What makes this work unique to me." Understanding though there are few uncharted frontiers in representational painting you don't always have to live in the same city that everyone else has chosen to live in, if the country is in your heart that's where your head should be as well. Find what interests you and figure out how you want to communicate it. Then the worries of establishing yourself will be fewer and fewer. If what you say on the canvas (or panel) is well thought out, well executed, and well marketed (put in front of enough eyes to see it) you won’t have issues getting established.

"Instamatic Orange"
Brian Burt
Pastel on Panel
8" x 6"

Do you teach or lead workshops?  Do you feel that teaching helps 
an artist develop, and if so, in what ways?

Very seldom. I don't begrudge people wanting to teach workshops, but I must say I rarely, if ever, come out of one that I taught with knowledge that I couldn't have as easily obtained at my easel in my studio. I think workshops should be taught (and are taught) for financial reasons and/or because the artists teaching sincerely wants to impart some of what they know onto others.

What’s next?  Do you have any current or upcoming exhibitions of 
your work?  Any special projects you’re involved in right now? 

Next up I will be participating in a still life show in June at Cincinnati Art Galleries and they have requested 8-10 new still lifes for that.  I also will be included in The Miller Museum's exhibition in Door County, WI later this year, as well as a handful of portrait commissions that are waiting to get started and completed. And there's always DPW!

Please visit Brian's website or his wonderful blog Art 4 Diapers to view more of his wonderful paintings.