You can already feel the light shifting. Days shortening. Especiall when I am up north…winter’s already waiting in the wings. I was reading The Art Spirit again the other night and this line grabbed me: “You will never get form till you WANT it.And wanting to want it is not wanting it.” That feels about … Read more
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about learning, what it means to improve at something, even late in life. Drawing, especially. I’ve been doing more studies of the same image, experimenting with different approaches. Color has been tricky for me. I tend to overdo it and end up with mud. So I’ve been going back … Read more
So I cheated a little this past month.That’s how I’m starting June. I had planned to share an oil painting I’ve been working on, but things aren’t going well there. It may need a complete reworking, so I’m putting it aside for a while. Instead, I’m cheating a bit and using a small charcoal drawing … Read more
On a plane ride back from visiting my daughter’s family, I was sketching from a photo on my phone of our six-month-old granddaughter. During that quiet, awkward period while waiting to “deplane” (what a strange word), a woman across the aisle commented on my sketch. I hadn’t realized she could see what I was doing, … Read more
I have been playing around with this idea for some time in the sketchbooks. I finally figured it is done. It is an oil painting on a plywood panel measuring 16″ by 20″. It seems the young people I have around me have become the smarter ones. They remind me of the important things in … Read more
Going through the second half of the year or so, looking at some of the sketches I have done… most of these have been posted on my instagram page close to the date they were completed. I have added the better ones to my webpage https://www.john-huisman.com/sketches/ I will work on adding them to my pinterest … Read more
I have been spending a lot of my daily sketch time on a small oil painting instead. Seems like if I am going to try to learn more about oil painting skills, working small is a good way to get some finished projects behind me and if they don’t work out, I won’t have used … Read more
7-16-22 I am trying to work larger on the page with this. Seems like I start bigger usually and then things shrink down as I get more accurate with the forms. So I tend to work with small compartments of the page. Here I tried to start large and stay large. Some success I guess. … Read more
This is a door project I have been working on. It is basically a frame and raised panel door made of Alder. I made several sketches before I started , this is what we settled on: At this point the hard part is to be patient and not rush it. It needs to take the … Read more