Life of a Cape Town Artist

Living in Cape Town is a very great priviledge for any artist. Here we are surrounded by all the best life can offer you. There are the beaches, sometimes deserted due to weather conditions, sometimes the most colourful display of people, umbrellas and all that goes with a summer holiday. Then we have the mountains, the vineyards with their awesome autumn colours. The old Cape Dutch houses, the colourful houses of the Bo-Kaap and the townships all make wonderful subjects for painting.

I love to go out over weekends and drive around and take pictures of possible paintings. It is not always practical to take all the painting material but I do take a sketch pad to draw pictures and compositions as I go along. There is just SO much beauty around us here in Cape Town, if the old masters only knew!

This is a painting inspired by a deserted beach on a cold day!

Make sure to visit my website: Painted Canvas. There you will find most of my paintings and at very reasonable prices. You can view my earlier works, my more recent works in various categories, little gems, and commissions. You will also find out how to commission a painting, be it a landscape, still life or portrait of your dear dog, cat or mother-in-law!

Enjoy!

Notan (abstract) pattern - strong design

They say (and they are not the You magazine! They are famous and well established artists), anyway, they say that a painting must have a strong underlying abstract design (also known as Notan design) to be a good painting. The question might be asked, what is a good painting? And who decides what the criteria is for a good painting? Every artist has his or her own unique style and taste. Every viewer has his or her own unique taste. So who is right? I like Renoir's paintings, someone else likes the paintings of Jackson Pollock more.

My personal view is that a painting is good if it draws the viewer's eye into the painting towards the centre of interest, and as soon as the viewer moves his eye away from that focus point, the painting immediately forces him to move his eye back to that focus point. The viewer might not even like the subject matter, or the style of brushwork, or the colours, but he just can't stop looking at the painting.

Remember, I am still learning! I am showing you 2 of my paintings with their abstract designs. The first one does not have a strong design. It might be a nice painting, but it is not a good painting. The dark areas are too scattered.

The second painting is a good painting with a very strong abstract design. It has a definite centre of interest. Can you see what it is? Take note how your eye moves around the picture. Does it go back to that centre of interest every time? This painting also received the most compliments from artists on the Paintings I Love website.