William G. Smith
(307) 200-6630, (208) 932-3246 wgsmith@williamgsmith.com www.williamgsmithart.com
An exceptionally versatile artist, William G. Smith paints a wide gamut of subjects in oils and acrylics—wildlife, landscapes, sporting art (hunting and fishing), figures and portraits. He explains that after the excruciating exactitude of achieving a perfect likeness in a portrait, the creative freedom of painting a landscape or animal is very welcome.
Smith says that living in northwestern Wyoming, in close proximity to Grand
Teton and Yellowstone National Park, nearly everything he paints is visible right out the window.
The artist paints in a realist style, and while he has a considerably accurate memory, he often uses photo references as well, combining components of dozens of different photos for one painting. “I’m always trying to make sure it looks ‘right’ to me, judging it against a lifetime of mind’seye images.”
He continues, “In the past couple of years, I’ve been doing more and more of my layout sketching, composition and sometimes fairly complete color sketches for a painting, using a digital tablet and stylus. It’s remarkably like doing physical drawing or painting. [It] demands exactly the same artistic skills, plus some computer technical wizardry…recently, I was working on a portrait, and tried out four different backgrounds on layers behind the person’s face and upper body. By turning those four background layers on and off, I was able to immediately compare them, and even then hybridize a couple to make a new and better background layer. Much more efficient than doing it with paint and brush.”
The Western art of Pennsylvania-native Den