I have been following the blog posts of several artists for a couple of years now, some of whom are amazingly generous with information. Since I have discovered the world of blogging, it has opened up a lot of new ideas for me, I think I would have to attend a pretty amazing graduate school program in painting to get all of this, and it is free.
One artist whose work I very much admire is Stapleton Kearns (isn't that a cool name) , he is an accomplished and successful landscape painter. I consider my reading of his blog to be a graduate level class online.
One of the many generous things Mr. Kearns does is to offer a critique of reader's work. After reading a few of these, I sent in a jpeg of my recent painting of the fountain in the park. Within that week, he had posted my work with a very instructive critique. With Mr. Kearns' permission, I am going to quote his words here and post my work again to demonstrate.
Stapelton Kearns in his own humble words explains his approach to the critique; "Thank you mystery artist for letting me crit your work. I know it takes a lot of courage to allow me to rip into your painting. I hope you and the other readers will profit by my criticism. Of course you are you, and the painting is something you have made. I critiqued the painting, and not you. For our mental health it is important to understand that. What a great guy I would be if I could improve myself as easily as I can improve my painting."
Here is the link to Stapleton Kearns' blog http://www.stapletonkearns.blogspot.com
And here is his website with a selection of beautiful landscape work. http://www.stapletonkearnsgallery.com
