18 May, 2008

Italian Olive Grove

Olive Grove Sketch
9" x 11"
Pastel & Charcoal on Sketch Paper
Casey Klahn

A dear cyber friend allows me to do work from her photos. Here's draft one. Keep an eye on this space for updates.
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6 comments:

Azure Accessories said...

Stopped by to say I love the "Yellow Sky"...

May 18, 2008 at 6:43 PM
Casey Klahn said...

Thank you, Heather.

Heather is referring to this artwork #17 .

May 18, 2008 at 10:20 PM
Adam Cope said...

nice to see you back at your drawing board :-)

i admire this work from a photo, (as i'm not very good at this type of thing) - it reflects your 'visual intelligence' that you aren't just copying a photo. how do you do that? really, this has always foxed me. got trapped in it with my recent large watercolour of the great sphinx of gaza.

btw, olive trees have a lot of silver in their barks, though in certain light can seems black as old boots, balck with worn age.

bravo

May 19, 2008 at 12:22 AM
Casey Klahn said...

Hey, thanks, Adam. I did a full sheet from this sketch image and I am outright thrilled with it. I will have to wait for the pro photo to post it, though.

The interesting story with the big work was that I was constantly and repeatedly hushing the voice in my head telling me art rules.

I never knew that about the silver bark. Do they have olive trees in So. France?

I guess my motive in the blacks was to use a big stick of charcoal just for elemental reasons, and there is a dark violet gray (home made) pastel in the trunk, too.

On the photograph to drawing part, I guess I'll have to expand on this when I post the bigger work. I've never put it in words.

I know one thing is that I have this indelible influence in my head of VVG fruit trees in blossom and of a particular WK that is of olive trees in Italy that are almost entirely "whited out" in fog.

More later on this. Thanks for the post idea, and for appreciating a work in sketch form.

May 19, 2008 at 8:45 AM
Adam Cope said...

well you know, it IS a pleasure to chat art to you :-)

thanks for sharing the info. not sure there's much there other than do it big & more importantly, do it from the heart (avoid using squaring-up grids & the ever present risk of getting pedantic about details, of painting like bulletin points in writing, as if art were something to be ticked off a list of must-follow rules).

this would make for an interesting post - but you being something of a 'post-impressionist', you already give yourself liberty to construct a painting on different game-plans than "copying what you see".

re-olives they most certainly do have silver bark.

i have two olive trees in my garden, though being the south west of france, we are in the hot wettish altantic south (hence the bordeaux wine) rather than the hot drier mediterrean south, which does give better olives (wine not so good IMO; countryside less spoilt too).

however i regularly paint & exhibit in st.rémy de provence, not far from vincent's olive groves. been going there off & on for over thirty years now. i've got a photo somewhere of some old olives in an old vineyard in the mist - very silvery - which i'll try & stick up on my blog for you soon. do a silver companion-piece for your 'italian olve grove'?

now back to work.

May 19, 2008 at 9:21 AM
Robyn Sinclair said...

This is very exciting, Casey. I can't wait for the big picture.

May 19, 2008 at 10:01 AM

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