response 1 of 5:

Feb 4 19:42 UTC 1996

I am currently very interested in and pleased by American Impressionistic
oils.  Just browsed through "Art in America" and was delighted with the beauty
of some of the work by American Impressionists since 1900.  I would be most
interested if anyone knows any local (around the southeast Michigan or
Northern Ohio area) artists showing this type of work in local galleries. 
Most of the paintings in my home are original oils painted by my mother or
by a close friend who is an artist in New York.  I used to paint, long before
I became a psychologist and got so busy.  Now I just appreciate the work of
others.

response 3 of 5:

May 15 19:57 UTC 1996

Hey,  anyone else out there interested in painting?  If not, I could teach
you!  Come on!  There has to be more people on grex interested in paintings
than just headdoc and myself!

response 5 of 5:

Feb 17 08:17 UTC 2002

I am an artist and I have been for many years. I paint in acrylics and
watercolors. I have done sculpture also. I used to have an art gallery where
I sold mine and others paintings hhere in Omaha. Right now I am studying
computer science. It seems as much an art to me as traditional painting. I
have done illustration and anmiation on the computer also. My website is at
www.briardy.htmlplanet.com

I guess that qualifies me to answer that question. What goes on in my head
when I paint? It depends on what it is that I want to paint. I usually spen
a long, long time deciding what to paint. Although I have had formal training
in the arts, I don't neccesarily think that that is any sort of an advantage.

Design is crucial to a successful painting and I often have to spend hours
staring at the canvas before I can"see" what it is that I am going to paint.
Sometimes I paint from photographs and often I combine different phot images
into one picture. When the image is filtered through my brain and onto the
canvas, I make it look "natural". It is always important to remember that it
is a painting that you are working on and not a photo.

If I were to give advice to someone learning to paint, I would tell them to
study the still life to learn how to "see" reality, the impressionists to
"see" color and the classic cubists to understand 2 dimensional design. Of
course there are many more aspects to art than these qualities but they are
a very good start.

When I am painting, I look for softness above all else. Some of my favorit
artists are the French Roccoco painters. Men like Francois Boucher and his
pretty little boys and girls, or Renoir and his plump pink nudes. There is
so much to admire in the history of art that as I am painting pictures, the
works of artists in the past always comes to mind. I use certain techniques
that different artists have developed in centuries past. For example, in order
to create soft warm light like Rembrandt did, I add red to the shadows and
yellow to the high lights