“The Sullaway House in Mount Shasta” by Stefan Baumann
It has been snowing for the past few days and when it stopped I grabbed my paints and searched for a location in town to paint. It was a beautiful day. This painting is of a home located in Mount Shasta called The Sullaway House. I have included some pictures of the painting in several stages so you can see how I painted it.
It is impossible for artists to have all the answers, or to paint without making mistakes. The very nature of mixing paint itself is a trial and error process. When you are mixing colors and creating various tones and values, you will sometimes discover “by accident” combinations of color nuances and brushstrokes that are spectacular. However, what seems to be pure chance is really the accumulation of many previous efforts.
There is a pathway to excellence in your paintings. It goes like this. The more you paint, the more mistakes you make, and the more mistakes you make, the more you learn how to avoid and correct those mistakes, resulting in more knowledge and fewer mistakes. Despite what you see in DVDs and painting shows on TV, none of the artists have the ability to paint what they intend to paint without experimenting. In fact, the nature of painting is one of constantly correcting the stroke you just placed on the canvas by deciding what the next stroke will be. How you repair your mistakes becomes your technique and style, and this process takes making many mistakes, many HUGE MISTAKES.
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Plein air and Alla Prima artist Stefan Baumann, host of the PBS painting series “The Grand View, America’s National Park through the eyes of an artist” and author of “Observations Of Art and Nature,” travels in his vintage travel trailer painting America’s western landscape. Baumann paints outdoors with oils and canvas capturing stunning vistas, wildlife, western landscapes, National Parks and still life, thrilling art collectors throughout the world. He has many collectors acquiring his paintings as investment internationally. His painting style is called Romantic Realism with Lumunism and the extraordinary way he captures the effect of light is a truly an American Style used to paint the Western Landscape. He can be seen painting in Yellowstone, Yosemite and in the Grand Canyon and Baumann’s “how to paint” DVDs filmed on location in the National Parks are the very best on the market.