Oil Paint Practice

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Back from a 7 day holiday in Berlin and I am feeling refreshed. With that fresh return I had a great Life Drawing lesson this week. It actually started off badly as i began with a small brush and focused to heavily on sketching out the image. Jon called me out on in pretty quickly though and once I moved to a larger brush and actually started painting and not sketching it really came together. I am very happy with the likeness and the use of light and dark contrast. Not so happy with the actual  brush work. Allot of it feels quite unrefined and but hay its practice so i cant expect to get everything right.

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Oil Paint Practice

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The game is almost finished and I’m no longer doing evenings and weekends. That means I’m back to Life drawing with Jon once a week. Here is my first offering of the new season. From a live model (Katy) with oils over 2 hours. I tried to get in the whole posture and strait away (Starting at the foot). I  got into trouble as the head kept getting away from me(to big for the body). This was throwing everything out of whack. Jon stepped in and helped me scale up to match the head. Saying, clearly that is the scale i’m comfortable with and to work from that. Sp with the head in I worked back down to the Foot and over all i’m very happy with the result.

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Doodles

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The Next Image from my sketchbook. This one I have always wanted to colour and turn into a t-shirt design. Maybe it will be come my first Thread-less submission. Who knows. Watch this space.

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Doodles

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I found that we have an A3 scanner at work. this is amazing as I hate scanning big images on A4 and having to stitch them together. Having been quite lax with painting and uplaoding recently I am going to try and plum the depths of my sketch books and find some choice images to scan and upload. So this blog may deviate from painting posts for a while until i get into the mood to put brush to canvas again. This image depicts what Tooth fairies really look like.

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Charcoal Sketch Practice

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Well I went and forgot my paints for last weeks life drawing lesson so instead i did some sketches in charcoal. Very satisfying the way you can imitate the method of painting and fill in the image. Using the rubber to bring out the highlights.Something I should try to do more often…. Forget my paints so i can try other mediums as its a refreshing change.

 

Oil Paint Practice

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Life drawing lesson (from life) with oils on an old pre used canvas. The pre-used canvas gave a nice thick base to work on. I had to go thick with the paint quickly to establish the new image as the old image was confusing the drawing allot at the beginning. Its a shame to lose the original image but even though I can now afford more canvas the reality is I have nowhere to store them. Better to re-use them. I might try flipping some over so I get a blank side as alternative to going over old images. Ill need to get a staple gun for that though. Overall I’m happy with how this came out. Lots of tones in there and lots of paint. Still a big focus on colours. Its actually not a bad likeness this time. Far from perfect but a happy result.

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Oil Paint Practice

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Catching up with the now. This is the painting from the life drawing lesson last Thursday. Using the flip side of the cardboard from the week before (still no canvas). I tore of the finish layer creating a very fluffy layer underneath. Bad idea. It became even more absorbent than with the finish. Never mind. Pay day on Friday so I can get some new canvases. Still using Oils with a Life model over 2 hours. A focus on colour mixing. The image itself is maybe not so great but I am pleased with the colour choices. The dark green/brawns add a real depth that I haven’t always achieved with my other paintings. The face is terrible again, not a good likeness. You may note the eyes on the far right of the board and my utter failure to recreate the effect in the actual image. Next week I may go bigger with the face so that i can focus on these details. I have a habit of trying to fit the hands and the head into the one image. I need to stop doing this and focus on more specific areas and make them bigger on the canvas. Or ask the model to put the hands nearer the head 😉

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Sculpture Design

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Some Models myself and Jon.Newey made last weekend as part of a sculpture design competition we are entering. This is of just one of the six models we made over 2 days. The results of our initial prototype and concept discussions. This weekend i am mocking them up in 3d and doing the main concept/mood image. Ready for the submission on Monday. Ill post again with a more detailed description of the project after.

Oil Paint Practice

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Ok catching up with the now this is from a week ago. Life mode with oil paint. Not on canvas this time as Ive run out! I have been re-using a few of them but they are getting pretty thick with paint now which doesn’t make for a great texture to paint on. Back to this image. Instead of using canvas I used piece of colored card. If canvases with paint already on them are a bad texture to paint on the the card is terrible. The paint just absorbs in and goes nowhere. There was a silver lining to this though as it forced me to get allot thicker with the paint. Its not the best image but again lots of focus on colour mixing and getting correct tones.

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Oil Paint Practice

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Painting from life on canvas with oils. This is from 3 weeks ago.Ive been a little lax in posting the images as its been so hectic with other projects. I’m making a new move towards learning how to mix the colours needed. You may notice the strong salmon colour here which is made using orange, yellow and white. I still have a way to go but will be focusing on this over the next few lessons. Overall i was pretty happy with this one. Especially around the body area. Still struggling with faces.The likeness is better than usual. I feel like its still not really very painterly or expressive. I guess that will come. I still need to look at doing some studies.

Im going to the John Singer Sargent exhibit at the nation al portrait gallery to have a look at some works fro ma master. Maybe that will help.

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