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OLIVER PYLE FINE ART

eric.kaye
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eric.kaye
Jan 27, 2025
In Inspiration Challenge 2024
A final try at this scene, incorporating some suggestions on how to make the picture seem more serene as was the feeling when the photo was taken. Thanks to all for the suggestions. Cropped it to remove some unneeded detail, tried as best I could to connect darker areas. Still not perfect, but getting better.
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eric.kaye
Jan 25, 2025
In Inspiration Challenge 2024
A second attempt at this scene at 11"x15". Some of this I really like, but it doesn't quite have the sense of calm I felt when I saw it. Any ideas would be helpful.
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eric.kaye
Jan 23, 2025
In Inspiration Challenge 2024
Every morning my wife and I walk past this spot with our dog. One morning last summer the light was hitting it just so and there was a quiet timeless quality our New England town can sometimes evoke. No other people or dogs. It seemed so perfect I stopped to take a photo.
There is no underdrawing. I just started sketching loosely using a 12 Princeton Aqua Elite with a really pointy tip -- a new brush for me that I like a lot --and a light gray/blue wash. As the painting took form I added some quin gold/raw siena washes and went from there.
I was hoping for a plein air feeling and now that it's done, The next version gets a careful underdrawing and a plan for a more finished version the way Olly is discussing in the most recent on-line tutorials. We'll see what happens.
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eric.kaye
Jan 19, 2025
In Inspiration Challenge 2024
I kept coming back to this photo and finally decided to paint it. Though not a typical fishing related picture, it captures the peace that can be found on the river and perhaps the cold martime afternoon and coming storm.
I hope people don't stop sharing their paintings now that the holiday season is past. It has been so insprirarional for my own work to see that of others.
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eric.kaye
Jan 15, 2025
In Inspiration Challenge 2024
I'm trying to work with some of Olly's techniques for the trees. Also, as discussed in previous posts, working on how to indicate a thin fishing line in the air. In this case I tried to paint around the line and then added guache to make it more visible. It is not as successful as the scrathing out used in some of the other images.
This painting is of a new pool that was created by the installation of a massive rip rap bank which gives the opportunity to explore painting tightly intermeshed boulders as well as the trees behind and water and near bank. I'm happy with a lot of this, I think, but the line is really clunky and takes away from the rest.
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eric.kaye
Jan 13, 2025
In Inspiration Challenge 2024
This is from a photo I took of a friend who makes and fishes his own bamboo rods and has a beautiful Spey casting style. I wasn't going to post any more fishing related paintings but this one is an exercise in managing the washes , trying to create depth and clarity to the various layers of stone and foliage. I rewatched Olly's video where he adds the distant hill and the near trees as inspiration. Not sure about the painting as a whole, but I'm pleased with how the far bank turned out. Getting closer to who I want it to be.
I adjusted the colors and they are pretty much correct though maybe a tad bright.
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eric.kaye
Jan 09, 2025
In Inspiration Challenge 2024
This is the top of Skye Lodge Pool on the Margaree River on Cape Breton in Canada, another attempt at portraying this beautiful and wild place. Sometimes there are salmon in the pool, and sometimes not. You never know but the anticipation keeps you coming back.
This is probably my last fishing related submission to the inspiration challange but possibly some other subject will click as I look through photos. Until then I'm painting at a botanical conervatory at a local college and not working from photos. Mostly orchids, but it's the closest I'll get to a jungle this winter!
The colors of the painting are a little towards the yellow/green, and that's the actual painting rather than a reproduction artifact. I might try this one again but I'm ready to move on. I find these near landscapes particularly challenging, but keep getting drawn back to them because of their human scale; I am stubborn enough to continue working on them dispite the difficulties.
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eric.kaye
Jan 07, 2025
In Inspiration Challenge 2024
I try to paint somethng every day, and Olly's Inspiration Challenge has me going back to photos from our fall fishing trip to Nova Scotia for a picture of yet another beautiful day on the river. I may do one or two more, but then I promise I'll move on. I left my wife out of the finished painting.
This is painted on an interesting paper, a 140lb cold pressed Indigo Art Paper. If you look carefully you can see it looks like a laid paper, and I like the way it takes the granulating paint; very different from the rough Arches and Magnani I usually use.
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eric.kaye
Jan 03, 2025
In Inspiration Challenge 2024
Sometimes I feel like I live for those few weeks in the summer when I find myself on a salmon river. Olly's inspriation challenge has really rekindled a wish to get back to the sense of serenity and purpose being on the stream gives. There's a with the chance toconnect with something primal in nature -- which is the feeling I'm trying for here.
I laid in the first washes last night and completed the foreground rocks this afternoon.. I remember this moment really well. It was early and the mist was still burning off with the sun still behind the low clouds. There was no one on the water, but I added a figure to give another layer of meaning and focus to the image. The subject needs more work, but this painting is as done as it can be. It's 7"x10" and a larger format would probably handle the complexity a little better.
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eric.kaye
Jan 01, 2025
In Inspiration Challenge 2024
This is from the same trip as my first attempt. Early October in Cape Breton, NS.
I didn't even do a preliminary study or an underdrawing for this one. It's a really simple subject, so early this morning a laid in a wash for the sky and brought it down into the trees below and through to the far bank (bottom of the paper). When that was dry, after breakfast, I did a second wash, put in the tree line, and dropped in some darker pigment for the conifers, etc -- some stones on the near bank, perhaps. And finally after it dried again, I put in the dark reflections in the water. Then a couple of strokes of strong dark for the figure. I'm happy with it and it was nice way to spend New Years Day.
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eric.kaye
Dec 28, 2024
In Inspiration Challenge 2024
I spend a few weeks every autumn in this river on Cape Breton in Nova Scotia, Canada. There is a marvelous feeling of serenity in that activity because there aren't many fish caught, and most of the time you are waiting and talking to friends you've made there both new and old, or slowly moving through the water in a rotation of other fishermen. You cast and move carefully down the pool to the end. It's very meditative. I took some photos this year of fish taken, but somehow the experience of being on the river in a beautiful, remote part of the world enjoying the place and an underlying sense of calmness and anticipation seemed more interesting. I tried to capture that.
The sky was a little flat so I worked on that, and I thought adding another fisherman to the left would give a better sense of balance to the painting.
I hope Oliver sees this because I want to express my gratitude to him for all his efforts to share his love for and his approach to watercolor. I've ordered the new book, but it's backordered here, and won't arrive until February. So looking forward to seeing it and working with his ideas and techniques.
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