Restarted Life drawing classes for the new year. This is the first painting. same as always. Oils on canvas over two hours. This week I tried using the pallet knife to make the light areas as bold as possible, using the brush to blend the edges.
Category Archives: Oil Painting
Terminator – Time Laps
Currently working on the second painting in a series that started with behind the scenes C3P0. I found a great photo of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the makeup chair for the film Terminator 2. I knew I had to do this as well. Its going well and i’m at the final stage now but it has been a really long process. Such an iconic person and image that it absolutely had to be right and good. A few times along the way I felt i had nailed the likeness but then lost it again. Its definitely not perfect but i am really pleased with how its coming along. Probably up to about 8 hours on and off to get it to here. Ill post the final image soon when i’m happy with it. The question now is can i find another behind the scenes photo of an 80’s robot/cyborg to complete the set?
Oil Painting – C3P0
No life drawing lesson yesterday as I had a day off which I spent painting for fun. The aim was to paint a picture to hang in a local pub and see if i can sell it. I have been doing the life drawing lessons for a while now and so far all the paintings I have done have been either practice or for a friend. One of my friends from the lesson recently hung and sold a painting that they did. So I thought why not give it a go. I managed to find a behind the scenes photo of the designers on the original start wars constructing the final C3P0 costume which I thought would be perfect. Its a great image and with the new start wars movie on its way it seemed like a good one. In the end this took around 10 hours off and on while watching agents of shield in the background and defrosting my freezer. I’m really happy with it. Its not as painterly as I would like but the composition and light look great. It also has a high density of hands which I think I have captured pretty well considering that I usually struggle with them. No the complicated question of how much to ask for it. How much would I pay myself per hour as an artist? Ill need to factor in the time taken and the materials. Also someone I was speaking to mentioned that it is a 1 of a kind painting not a print with multiple copies and that should also be reflected in the price. I still need to varnish it and in the mean time may fix a few things I’m not happy with. So I still have time to think about pricing. Id like to give some of the money to the http://www.gorillas.org charity but lets see how much I can get first.
Oil Paint Practice
Fantastic lesson yesterday. Still sticking with the box layout technique Jon showed me last week. The image really came together in the first hour. This is really great as I seem to be getting quicker at blocking out and getting to the point I would normally get to after 2. This is giving me more time to work on tone and colour. The end likeness isn’t to bad. I spent most of the second hour working on the face. Hopefully this speed up in the layout will continue and ill be able to get deeper into the tone and colour in future paintings.
Oil Paint Practice
From last weeks Life drawing lesson. 2 hours with oils on canvas from a life model. Jon started the session by showing me how to lay out the posture using boxes rather can spheres. Up to now I have had allot of trouble getting the initial posture/composition right in these sessions using the sphere technique. Jon wanted me to try boxes now. And it worked. This is the first session that i can remember where Jon has not had to come in and make changes to scale/composition. Jon said that he does not teach box layout earl as with painting it is important to learn to paint curves initially as in particular with portraiture the body is mostly curves not hard angles. Once painting curves has been practiced the painter can move over to boxes for layout making scale easier to manage and also allowing curves to be added in (over the boxes) once the painting begins. very happy with this one. No Lesson next week but maybe ill try to practice this technique at home.
Oil Paint Practice
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.
Oil Paint Practice
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 😉
Oil Paint Practice
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.
Oil Paint Practice
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.
Oil Paint Practice
Disaster!.. Ok not disaster but just a bad session. I toyed with not posting this as I am not happy with it at all and didn’t even enjoy the process of doing it. This is meant to be a history of my paintings though so it doesn’t make scene to leave it out. Its not the first and I am sure it will not be the last session to frustrate me. Oils on canvas from Life. I struggled from the outset. Trying to use more medium earlier on as I did before but no matter what I did I just couldn’t seem to render the image as I was seeing it. For some reason I just didn’t have the same success mixing the colours and tones as I have done previously. Maybe time to try another monochromatic painting again.
heartfactory.co.uk 