Stacy Weitz Minch

Happy May Day! I finally took my new Soltek out yesterday (to the side of the house--I'm so adventurous ;). And I painted some lilacs. This was probably an hour to an hour and a half or so of painting. I could be happier with this painting--seems like I could have been using a larger brush for those blossoms, because they're feeling a little too broken up, especially in the shadows. But, that's alright. At least I painted. And next time I'll have some ideas on what to do differently. That's what I like about painting small and often (though often hasn't been often enough lately, mostly just Sundays--my time is spread pretty thin these days). But there's always next time to build on what I learned last time. And I also like analyzing what I did afterward and writing it down, so I can refer to my last painting and push a little further with each attempt. 

10x8", oil on board I think I'm ready to call it quits with this painting. Working from photos--I probably just shouldn't do it. One of my professors told me that a long long time ago, and he was probably more than right, but for some reason I keep coming back to it. And why? Convenience. It's so much easier to be able to hang around in the corner painting after the kids are in bed than arranging for some way for them to be occupied or cared for while I paint outside on location :P And sometimes I get tired of painting still life (which usually ends up being piece of fruit I have around the kitchen). But painting from life leads to much better decision making, and it's worth avoiding the frustration of trying to translate a photo into paint. Anyway, I think the color is alright (though it does seem a little hyper saturated in this photo). What really gets lost, I think, is the freshness of approach. For some reason, the immediacy of having the thing in fro...

I have a couple little things I want to touch up, but I think I'm actually ready to quit working on this one this time. Not because I think it's a perfect copy, and not because I couldn't go on fixing little things about it for the rest of my life. But because I think there are some major things that could be fixed that would require almost an entire rework of the painting. And I don't think it's worth it. I'd rather start fresh with something new and let this one be what it is--a cooler (color temperature-wise) copy of an incandescent-lit photograph of a painting I've never seen in person ;) The nuance of expression isn't perfect and of course that drives me nuts, but considering my mistake-laden sketchy start (yikes), I think I did just about the best I could without working it to death. The color. I made a deliberate decision at one point to de-yellow the mix. And I've tried a couple times to warm it up after-the-fact because my teacher ...

10x8", oil on panel I felt like doing a landscape yesterday, so I pulled out a photo from a trip to Bryce Canyon a couple years ago. We were there on Valentine's Day, and it was beautiful weather (at least in the afternoon--pretty unusual for February!). I was into shooting film at the time, and I took lots of photos (always with the idea in the back of my mind that I could paint them sometime--film had a better dynamic value range than digital, at least a couple years ago, and my digital camera is about 8 years old now). This particular reference photo was from a hike on the bristlecone pine loop. Bristlecone pines are some of the longest living organisms on earth. They can be up to 5,000 years old. And they grow in the rockiest of terrain. I always feel a little floored when I think about something that's been around that long (though this tree definitely looked among the smaller/younger ones on the loop). Here stands this little tree on the very edge of a cliff...

10x8", water mixable oil on panel Alright, time to give the yellow a rest. We've had these beautiful sun-bleached pink roses in bloom by our fence and they're just about to wilt into nothing, so I thought I would try painting one before it's too late. It seems like the values are just a little too segmented. Looking at other rose paintings I like, the lights are more or less connected, forming more of a solid value area with subtle variations within them (strangely enough, I kind of like the value structure my 30-second reductive drawing more than the finished product--the simplicity is nice). I think I'll probably go back to a drawing copy or something next. There's this teaching concept we use in speech pathology when working with dementia patients called errorless learning. Basically you teach people something on a level at which they can succeed every time, then increase complexity slowly, only as fast as they continue being successful. A little ...

Alright, this thing was driving me absolutely nuts as I watched it dry on the shelf in my little studio. I either had to throw it away or try to fix it, and since I figured it might be something of a learning experience, I decided to try to fix it.  And the good news is I do like it better now than I did before. I have a tendency to over-exaggerate the angle of lines when I draw, and I have a feeling that I may also have a similar tendency of over-exaggerating value contrasts in painting. So I tried to simplify the glass and bring it down to blend with the mass of the background (also brought the value of the background up). Technique-wise, I was trying to paint things into each other as opposed to right up to each other, and well, there it is. I'm still not in love with it, but it's better, or at least, closer to what I'm going for. As long as I'm making small improvements, it's alright. This may warrant another layer of paint in a few days. It's sti...

10x8" on board When I was growing up, the two acre lot around our house was surrounded by lilac bushes, and sometime in May they would all come into bloom at the same time. It smelled like Heaven (and if Heaven isn't teeming with lilacs, I'm outta there--that is if I get there in the first place ;). They're probably my favorite flower, and unfortunately so short-lived in the scheme of a year. Anyway, the last couple years around this time (they bloom about a month earlier in UT!), my nostalgia has set in and I've had an urge to paint the sweet little things. Which is trouble because they are really quite difficult to paint, if you're asking me. But still, I give it a try because I'm (almost) always up for an impossibly difficult challenge. This was about 2 hours of painting, and it would have been nice to have a little more time (although, honestly, I'm not sure it would have helped much). I'm feeling a little rusty with my painting l...

8x10, water mixable oil on canvas panel, 2/21/16 (sorry for the glare--just couldn't find an angle that didn't have it) I've been apprehensive to attempt a copy of a Sargent painting. He's so brilliant, and his drawings are hard enough to copy :P But I admire his skill so much, and I guess I was feeling particularly ambitious or fearless or something last night and decided to just go for it.  I don't think I was using quite the right color mix for the skin tones--his seemed more saturated somehow (I'm thinking maybe he was using yellow ochre? versus my cadmium yellow med. It seems like ochre has some serious tinting power). One fun thing about "drawing" with paint versus pencil or charcoal is that you can manipulate the "line" from both sides, if that makes sense...  Anyway, it was a fun experience, and I'm not totally horrified with how it came out (which I thought I probably would be). Of course it doesn't look exactl...

10x8", water mixable oil on linen mounted on gator foam, 12/9/15 "Give a tree its gesture... in a tree there is a spirit of life, a spirit of growth and a spirit of holding its head up." ( The Art Spirit , Robert Henri). I love Robert Henri... a lot of his paintings are really great. I really like the laughing children he started doing later in his career--his quick, bold brush strokes really capture the feeling of the moment. Some of his stuff doesn't really do much for me. I recently saw one of his quickly rendered street scenes in the Portland art museum, and was like, hmmm... but really, I find that encouraging. Everyone has their failures and triumphs (not saying he would have considered it a failure--he was so instrumental in championing art as an individual mode of self expression and a way of living a life, so I appreciate his work anyway, even if I don't find some of it particularly beautiful). Anyway, his passion and enthusiasm for painting are c...

8x10", water mixable oil on canvas panel, 11/13/15 A quick plein air sketch I did yesterday afternoon (about an hour or so). It was so sunny and beautiful and peaceful out in the crisp fall air. And then I came home, turned on the 5:00 news, and learned about all the tragedy in Paris. :'( "You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty." -Mahatma Ghandi