So lets talk about this modern painting family of Hall Groat I and II.
Today we will talk about the son, Hall Groat II, painter of food still lifes as well as landscapes.
He has some instructional painting DVDs for sale and here is a clip where he studies a pear painting of John Singer Sargent.
A clip showing 365 of the artists paintings in 2 minutes time. Too fast to really capture the paintings please watch and pause when you find a food subject you would like to see in detail. For instance upon seeing the chocolate kisses by the artist I stopped the video and compared them to kisses painted by Scott Fraser who I detailed not long ago who sometimes paints the kisses on a copper background.
The artist giving a painting demo on painting fabric. A four minute clip from a two hour dvd he has on the market.
The artist lives in Manilus, New York. He was born in 1967. Has wanted to become a professional artist since the age of 12, his father being a internationally collected painted Hall Groat.
The best thing we can learn from this artist is the composition. He places cheesecakes in just the right place, pointing them towards the corners but not exactly toward the corners. If you were to run a diagonal line from corner to corner and place a cheesecake on this line pointing towards the viewer that would be a good design. If you were to move the line so it ended up close to the corner it will give your artwork another dimension. Notice how the silverware or triangular shaped desserts use this design skill to make the paintings seem larger than their small size. Many of the works listed are 11 by 14 inches and many are 5 by 7 or 8 by 10 inches.
When I started to paint the still life I also tried to keep the perfect circle of a plate, or even an entire ellipse. This artist shows us its better to crop the picture and make an interesting organic shape of your own.
Groat II went to college at City University at New York earning a masters degree in fine arts. He also took classes at Syracuse University, Buffalo State University, and Savannah College of Art and Design. The artist is a professor of fine and media arts at Broome Community College.
A great teacher of the arts he has produced 27 DVDs and sold more than 18,000 copies! A great business artist who is highly skilled at painting food. One entire DVD, DVD 23 teaches how to paint great desserts.
Here is a link to the DVDs for sale by the artist. http://www.hallgroat.com/dvds/
Try to paint your next dessert before you eat it.
Next post will be Hall Groat Senior!
Happy painting!
D
Diattaart Blog 
Leave a comment