In this picture gallery the works of Martin Missfeldt are grouped into thematic areas. It is a mixture of chronological, technical and content phases. Behind each of the following thumbnails a sub-gallery is showing a series of pictures.
In April 2019 I started painting oil paintings again. After about 25 years in which I - apart from lost exceptions - did practically no oil painting, I have now returned to the medium of my beginnings. Even though oil painting brings many problems with it (dirty, smelly, difficult to clean), in the end it is the ideal medium for my paintings. Compared to the pictures from 30 years ago, there is one decisive difference: in the future I will record the creation process of the pictures with a video camera and publish it as a time-lapse. The creation video and the image itself form the work together.
The Speedpaintings are basically not pictures, but videos. A picture was painted digitally on the PC - and at the same time the painting process was recorded as a video using a "screen recorder" program. A time-lapse video was then created from this video raw material, which shows the painting process greatly shortened. The term "Speedpainting" is somewhat misleading, as Missfeldt usually takes about 3 hours to paint a picture. Compared to traditional painting techniques it is still very fast. See also: Speedpainting (Tutorial).
Martin Missfeldt started oil painting at the age of 14. Some of the very early pictures from school can be seen here. The first oil paintings are still painted on cardboard. But at the age of 16 Missfeldt started to work on canvas. The formats began with standard sizes of 30 x 50 cm, but grew relatively quickly.
At the age of 18, Missfeldt mainly painted oil paintings on 70 x 100 cm canvases. Also in this picture category: some sheets from the application portfolio for art studies in Berlin.
The tree pictures were created during his art studies at the Hochschule der Künste (now Universität der Künste) in Berlin. For several months Missfeldt painted and drew studies and sketches on the former orphaned railway area of the Gleisdreieck. That was in 1989, when it was a "ghost area" that was neither East nor West. Through a hole in the surrounding wire fence he reached the area and captured the overgrown traces of the former Berlin in pictures (entrance at the end of Großgörschenstraße). Birch trees and other bushes and grasses grew between the rails. The traces of the painful past were overgrown by nature and finally removed. Today the area is a local recreation park, the rails have been removed for the most part.
The watercolors are mixed chronologically. In the lower gallery there are both watercolors from early years and relatively new ones from the year 2011. The third gallery shows some watercolors, which were created during a Naxos journey during study times. See also: Watercolor Painting - Watercolor Painting (Tutorial)
More about watercolor (technique, colours, brushes, etc.).
Actually no real watercolors, but rather gouaches are shown in the fourth gallery. These are repainted excerpts from the Lucky Luke booklet "Der Richter".
Pencil drawings are the basis of every artistic production. The sheets shown here were mostly made in the early years - they show both realistic studies and an attempt to understand the drawing as a work of art. In addition to the pencil, Missfeldt also worked with other utensils, such as the pen (right gallery).
Here you will find a number of linocuts, which you can also buy. Here you will find a number of linoleum prints.
The question as to how other people might see their own pictures gave rise to two series of pictures that have to do with the themes of "eye test" and "visual perception". Missfeldt has outsourced the activities and new images on these themes to another website about visual test images and optical illusions. There you can find more pictures. Also in this context: the series "Neurobilder".
A few powerful oil paintings, more or less representational or abstract. These pictures were created from the beginning to the middle of the nineties.
These picture series and picture groups cannot be classified. They are chronologically partly far apart, and also technically serh different. What they have in common is a conceptual approach to painting: Before production, there was a (written) program, which was then worked on with a brush. Around 1998, however, Missfeldt rejected the "Programmatic Painting Approach" as counterproductive. It was a head-driven Sachgasse.
Missfeldt has painted a lot of humorous pictures: comics and cartoons. In the following a selection of the drawings, which are to be seen individually and do not belong to a larger series. Beside the "Shortcomics" there are also some digital pictures:
The most extensive picture series are giraffe cartoons. Since 1992 Mißfelt has been drawing more or less regularly. In the meantime there are well over 100 pictures. Most of them are painted with gouache on paper. A part of the series (since about 1999) shows famous art historical masterpieces in which humans became giraffes - beings with a very long neck that wanted to be organized in terms of composition. More about the cartoons.
Chronologically before the "masterpiece giraffes", Missfeldt drew and painted the following cartoons:
In the following a few more digital pictures, which Missfeldt has digitally painted and drawn over the last few years. They are rather graphics and illustrations. The artistic claim is missing ...
These digitally painted pictures are all painted with Adobe Photoshop and a graphics tablet. Digital painting offers many practical advantages over traditional painting such as oil painting or watercolor painting (for example, "save versions" or "last step back" or "zoom in"). But in the end the haptics and all other senses are missing. It is somehow also a bloodless painting... More about Digital Painting.
Missfeldt works since 30 years as a visual artist and media designer in Berlin/Germany. Many pictures are still not included in this online portefolio.
