Virgil's Art

Welcome to my collection of paintings and drawings.  My name is Virgil Opfer and I started painting using watercolors in the summer of 2008 when I was 71 years old.  I loved drawing when I was a kid, mostly cartoon characters.  I was an art major in high school and hoped to become an architect.  However, after high school, life’s major events got in the way of my pursuing either art or architecture.  After being wed in 1959, the combination of working full time on a drafting board at an aerospace firm while going to college part time for my degree in engineering and raising a family of four left me with no time for art. 

Then in 2008, my wife, Sharon, wanted me to resume my interest in art.  To that end, she gave me a beautiful artist’s easel, canvases, as well as a full set of oil paints and brushes.  The gift rekindled my interest in art, but I thought starting with watercolors would be easier than to start painting again by having to learn how to paint with oils.

To learn the basics of watercolors, I joined a group of other fledgling painters for lessons from Tom Tiedeman, a prolific watercolor artist based in Escondido, California.  I love Tom’s free and loose style of painting and his ability to produce a stunning painting in only a few hours.  However, I soon discovered that my interest in math, 20 years as an engineer, and my innate focus on details restrained my hands from being free and easy with the brush.  I realized that I preferred and needed to paint slowly and meticulously.  The more detailed and difficult the subject matter, the more I enjoyed the process.  I reluctantly dropped Tom’s classes and started learning on my own by reproducing images from “How to Paint” books, other artist’s paintings, as well as photographs from the Internet, both in color and black and white.

I like the styles of many artists and I have discovered that, with a little effort, I can reproduce their style.  However, after 12 years, I am still searching for my own personal style of painting.  At this point, from the perspective of developing my own style, I am most satisfied with my very recent portrait of my long-time friend and business partner, Chet Allen.  But I also like the more detailed style in my painting of the 1932 Ford pickup truck.  However, my very favorite painting is still my 2009 horse portrait painted from a black and white photograph.

I have come to realize that watercolors are a perfect fit for me, and I have no plans to tackle oil painting.  Ironically, at this writing, it has been over 12 years since receiving Sharon’s gift of the easel and I have yet to use it even once.

Virgil