"A View of San Miguel de Allende"

This piece was painted right after "Afternoon Light on San Miguel".
It is a companion piece, since the view is to the immediate left of the Afternoon Light painting.
Same time of day, but because I am looking a little to the left, the sun is not casting that orange light on everything quite as much.
Think of it like this. I am standing in the center of a clock face. The sun is at the 8 and the view in the Afternoon Light painting is as if I am looking toward the 1, so it is getting pretty direct light from the orange late afternoon sun.
This view is as if I turned and looked toward the 11, so it receives a bit more of a glancing light and is not reflecting that orange sun so much.



"A View of San MIguel de Allende", 18" x 24" oil on linen
Frank Gardner © 2008
Private Collection



I wanted to stick to the same color scheme of orange, purple and green as the dominant colors, but these colors are now in different proportions. It has a different tone, but they look good hanging next to each other.
The foreground is not in shadow in this painting, so there is more of the orange up front and in the middle ground with the churches. The greens, purples and blues dominate the distance.
If you open the other painting up in a different window you can just about line them up. Line up the "Afternoon Light on San Miguel" piece just a bit lower than "A View of San MIguel de Allende".

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to all. I had a little time to kill between basting of the turkey so I thought I would put up a little painting that I did a few months ago.
The sun is shining strong, so we will probably have our feast outside today.
Just thought that I would mention that.
I am thinking of all of you, and am thankful to have you all as friends.
Cheers!


"Horse and Reflections", 6" x 8" oil on board, Frank Gardner © 2008
Private Collection

Tagged once... twice... no, three times

This post is about the tag, but, just so you have something to look at, here is a little piece I did the other day while out painting with Jack. There were two guys out cutting cornstalks in this field. They were cutting rows into the field with machetes, making little piles of the stalks which they then pile into larger stacks.


"Cornfield", 6" x 8" oil on linen, Frank Gardner © 2008
$500. Framed. Available at Galeria Gardner

I plan on going back again to keep studying the colors in the drying cornstalks. It is a beautiful color buffet down there. I want to get some good info for a few larger paintings. They said it will take them about a week to cut this whole field.
I loved the green grass that was showing in the row that they had cut into the field.
Below is a picture of the painting and scene. The painting in progress is in focus and the corn is pretty blurry. It is a useful photo because it really shows the importance of squinting down to look for the big shapes first. If you can't tell, where I was looking is directly above the panel.






O.K., on to business.
I've been tagged by not just one, but three fellow bloggers. Thanks to Marc Hanson , Stacey Peterson ,and Paula Villanova.

Here are the rules:
1. Put a link in your posting to the person who tagged you.
2. List 7 unusual things about yourself.
3. Tag 7 other bloggers at the end of your post and comment on their blogs to let them know.

I am just going to do this once for all three tags. I can't come up with 21 people to tag who have not been tagged with this one already. Unusual things there are plenty of.

Seven unusual things.
Hmmm. well... I can't give up the good stuff and I dont want to dig so deep that I need therapy.

1.We collect all of our gray water and it is pretty much all we need to water our garden and yard.

2. I hate to throw anything out. I'll save all kinds of stuff thinking that one day I might be able to use it. Thanks Dad.

3.I hate to ask for help to do things. I built a lot of our home by myself. Electric, plumbing, putting up walls, painting, tiling, kitchen cabinets ( with some help) and on and on. And... am still working on it. Which leads to number 4.

4. I procrastinate. For example, I have been tiling our bathrooms for 12 years. I finished most of our upstairs bath pretty quickly, but there are little details that still have to be done. I have been doing the downstairs bathroom for about 3 years. Have about 3 square feet of the shower floor left and I am done. Julissa is about ready to kill me. Really. I think she lets me go on painting trips so she can have people come in and do projects without me stopping her and saying I can do it myself.

5. We live in a straw bale home. Three friends bought property together and we each built houses with straw, helping each other out.
A weird twist on the three little pigs I guess.

6. I collect and repair antique trucks.

7. I was kidnapped once in Mexico City. By four men dressed as police and in a police suburban, must have been police. No finger cutting or ransom or anything, but it was a real drag. That was 14 years ago or so.

8. I like weird movies and laugh when I think about them. A few favorites are: Nacho Libre, Napoleon Dynamite, The Party, Blazing Saddles, This is Spinal Tap and Repo Man. There are others, these are just the ones that came to mind quickly.


I decided to throw my own little twist into this one. One of those 8 things is complete baloney, malarkey, bull poop.
Can you tell me which one it is?

This tag seems to be going around faster than a San Miguel cough, so it was hard to find bloggers who had not been tagged with this one yet.
Here are 7 Blogs that I enjoy. Some are new friends and some I have known for a while. These are interesting blogs that you might want to check out if you don't know them.

Eric Merrell

Mike Rooney

Dan Corey

Matt Innis

Bonnie Luria

Don Gray

Silvina Day

Am I too late for Friday Fun?

I have never added a video link on the blog before.
Lots of my friends do it.
That's good enough for me.
That's how it all starts right?
I got a kick out of this.

It's called "The Job".

I'll probably get another post up this weekend, so check back.

"Afternoon Light on San Miguel"

There are several new paintings that I want to post, but I have not had much time to get them together for the blog.
Here is a new one that I am pretty happy with. This is a late afternoon view of San Miguel. I really like this vantage point of town. There is a small hill and then a dip. The mid distance trees in light are hiding part of San Miguel and then the part that you see here rises up. The setting sun was casting a nice orange glow to everything and the foreground was in shadow. I like the green, purple, orange color scheme of this piece.



"Afternoon Light on San Miguel", 18" x 24" oil on linen
Frank Gardner © 2008
Private Collection


I'll work on getting a few other posts up soon. Thanks for checking in.

A New Project - Thoughts on Giclee Reproductions

Recently, I had an offer to work with a great interior designer who really admires my work. I won't go into all of those details right now, but working with him has gotten me started producing a few giclee reproductions of my art.

We are really starting to get some great results, so I feel comfortable writing about it here.
There is a lot of time and effort that goes into getting these to look good. I have been spending many hours with the printer trying to match color and learning about what a reproduction of my paintings can look like compared to the original.

Now, getting blogger to post accurate color on these images is another story.



"Little Dancer", Frank Gardner ©
Giclee Reproduction 10" x 8" image size
Introductory Price: $60. USD
plus shipping



My feelings on producing digital prints, or giclees, of my art have been mixed for a while.

The idea of offering high quality digital reproductions of my paintings at a moderate price is appealing.
It would allow many more people to enjoy my art that maybe could not afford an original.
There are also many paintings that I am proud of, that are in private collections. The ability to offer giclees of those pieces to others that may have missed out on buying the original is another plus.

My fear had been that somehow this would "cheapen" the original art in some way.
After thinking about it for years I am getting over that.
Heck, Monet, Van Gogh, and renoir have been reproduced on posters, bags, cards , magnets, umbrellas, and probably underwear for years, and their originals are still highly valued.
In the art world, name recognition is important, and I think that getting reproductions of my work out can only help the name recognition for my "brand".

I have decided to go with high quality art paper instead of printing on canvas. Printing oil paintings on canvas seems to me like there is some sort of effort to mislead the buyer/ viewer that it is a piece of original art. It is not. They are high quality reproductions made with archival inks, but it is in no way supposed to pretend that it is an original painting. That may be one thing that had turned me off to the whole idea before. When I see "enhanced" giclee prints on canvas for sale I feel like someone is trying to say that a few dabs of clear gel or paint on top of a reproduction makes it a piece of "original" art or something.

I also feel that limited editions should be saved for the real hand pulled stuff that those numbers were intended for.
I am offering these as open editions, no numbers. The signature is on the painting already, so no signature in pencil on the reproduction either.

I will be offering these for sale on my web site once I get the shipping from Mexico and ordering issues worked out.
For now, You can contact me directly if you are interested.
The reproductions are on high quality art paper and un framed.
I'm sticking to making the reproductions the size of the original painting. I feel that the brushwork looks best like that.

I would really love to hear some feedback and opinions on giclee reproductions from both artists and collectors of art.

Anybody have any thoughts to share on reproducing artwork?
Buying or selling?
Below are the other giclees that I am offering so far.
Scroll down below them to post a comment.


"Burro Bonito", Frank Gardner ©
Giclee Reproduction, 14" x 18" image size
Introductory Price: $160. USD
plus shipping



"Woman and Doves", Frank Gardner ©
Giclee Reproduction, 14" x 18" image size
Introductory Price: $160. USD
plus shipping



"Working Hard II", Frank Gardner ©
Giclee Reproduction, 14" x 18" image size
Introductory Price: $160. USD
plus shipping



"Rastrojo", Frank Gardner ©
Giclee Reproduction, 14" x 18" image size
Introductory Price: $160. USD
plus shipping



"Fiesta of Flowers", Frank Gardner ©
Giclee Reproduction, 7" x 5" image size
Introductory Price: $40. USD
plus shipping

"Sol Dorado"

I have not had much time to work on the blog lately. The screen on my Powerbook has finally broken and is dangling like a loose tooth ready to fall out. I can only work on it when it is propped up against something.
Here is a recent painting done on location.



"Sol Dorado", 8" x 10" oil on linen, Frank Gardner © 2008
Private Collection

Artist Umbrellas

Eric Merrell has written a great post on his blog about artist umbrellas.



I mentioned my new EasyL umbrella in a post last month, but Eric really goes into a bit of the history behind artist umbrellas and reasons for using them.

In his post, Eric shares a lot of good thoughts.
Among other things he mentions "color relationships". That is something that I always try and get across in my workshops. The way that one color looks COMPARED to the other colors around it.
Eric has a lot of good ideas on color and painting. It is worth a scan through the other posts on his blog if you are not familiar with it.

So go there now.

A plein air video by Jeremy Lipking and Tony Pro

I recently posted about painting in the rain while we were up in Maine.
My friend Jeremy Lipking and his buddy Tony Pro have a video they have done about a recent plein air painting adventure.
You can check it out here.
Then go to Jeremy's blog and tell him it's time to put up a new post on his blog.

Thanks everyone for asking Jeremy to post something new. He posted today, so you don't need to ask him any more.
Thanks.

Election Day - FINALLY

Today is election day In the US and I have been following for too long.
I am like a moth to a flame with the whole thing. I try and read or watch as much of it as I can.
More than is good for my blood pressure I'm sure.

I hate to mix politics and my blog, so I will spare you and not go into any of that.
We all need to live together after the results are tallied, so whatever the outcome, here's to a better future for ALL of us.

Today is a beautiful day here, sunny and warm, so I decided to head out to paint just to try and take my mind off the whole election thing for a few hours.

So I'm driving along looking for something to paint, and this guy caught my eye.
You know I love painting donkeys, but this one said something special to me.
I hustled my gear out of the car and he stayed still long enough for me to get this quick sketch.




"True Blue", 8" x 10" oil on board, Frank Gardner © 2008
Private Collection


Glad I could relax and take my mind off the politics thing.
I needed that!
Now back to tracking the progress of the day.


Funny how these guys are getting around. Have a peek at Christine's blog to see more.
Jennifer also has a donkey posted.
and Paula has a donkey on her blog.
Elizabeth likes donkeys too.
Paula Villanova has added an independent donkey.

if you decide to join in and post your own donkey of a different color.
( or an elephant I suppose)
Drop me an email and i'll gladly add a link to your post.