Thanks to my drawing teacher, I learned how to do the eyes today! The picture isn’t great – will try to get a better photo tomorrow and update this post – but was too excited with the results to delay the post. Also worked on the values to start getting the complicated patterns laid in.
Been spending more time this past week on drawing and practice sketches for future painting projects.
The puppy face, Zip, got some more work. Most of the texture is in place, so next update will mostly be values, which should get it most of the way there. Warning – the eyes will remain a white void of creepiness until I have some time to practice.
This is a view of the Golden Gate bridge with San Francisco in the background. Was reminded that I should draw from the back forward, i.e. started with the bridge on this one and made the perspective and proportions much more difficult on myself. But the sketch came out looking good and I have a feel for the basic block-in when I’m ready to do the painting. This may end up being a large piece, or a diptych with two 16″x20″ panels laid horizontally, with the separation near the center of the bridge.
Zip is one of my dogs, a 2 year old ball of energy. She lives for frisbees and tennis balls. She’s incorrigible and relentless with her need for play, until about an hour after dinner, at which point the storm has passed and she’s wiped out.
The reference photo is what I’m working towards, and represents this calm that I so embrace at the end of the day.
Below is the sketch after 2 sessions totaling maybe 90 minutes. The first 30 minutes was getting the outline right, followed by an hour tonight drawing more than a thousand lines of hair in varied directions. The time it takes to get the masses of hair going in the right direction is indeed tedious, but well worth the effort once the shading of values starts. It’s a little like magic as the shape comes to life. And that’s with just a few other sketches done in this fashion as practice, so I’m hoping these dog faces start to get more realistic with some regular practice.
Finally pushed through a long session today and got this one done. I’m sure there are a few highlights to do and small tweaks when I look at it tomorrow, but happy with the final work. I’m sure I’ll look back on this in the future and laugh at the quality, but for today, it’s a good start.
Since the last session, the roses were touched up (yes, again), leaves were finished, stems done, and the ever intimidating glass vase wrestled to the painterly mat.
Woohoo! Time for wine.
Managed to work in another short session tonight, a Tuesday! Good progress on details and some changes. Really getting the hang of some of the subtleties within individual petals. Might take a whack at the vase later this week b/c I’m pretty happy – finally – with the roses themselves.
Thought I was getting close last time I posted, but decided to rework some of the palette after some guidance from one of my art instructors. Learning patience with this, but now I’m to the point where it’s enjoyable every session because it keeps moving in the right direction. No more predictions as to when it will be done, but rest assured it won’t take this long next time! Progress photo below, although may need to update the picture in this post b/c the lighting looks off. Granted, I moved the palette to more orange and yellow, but it’s not this saturated.
More progress, albeit slow, on the white roses. Used more value contrast, incorporating raw umber, ultramarine blue, and darker and lighter variations of yellows. This updated photo reflects more progress on the rose in the center bottom, center top (in profile), and far left lower.
The plan (perhaps I should call it ambition) is to finish this project over the weekend, forcing myself to not get lost in the details. Mentioning it on this post to embarrass myself if I don’t get it done.
Breaking down what really needs to be done:
Stay tuned… getting close on this one.
Spent a couple more hours on the roses today. Progress can be subtle, which is what happened today. I had been working towards variations of yellow, but realized the right color was closer to orange. Still having trouble figuring out the right technique to get realistic rose petals, but the practice has been moving things along. I’m happy with the palette, though, so the painting will at least look good from a distance no matter how the detail work progresses. Ha!
Next session will focus on adding more petals, the vase, and updates to the roses in the middle back row.
New quick project before the return to Giverny wipe-out. Haven’t painted roses before, so it could get ugly, but so far so good. Inspirational roses,
Started with a quick sketch of the main rose focal point, which came surprisingly fast. Guess the sketching lessons/practice are helping.
Next step, basic turpsy sketch on the panel. Again, got lucky on first try and it’s ready for some paint.
About an hour later the first layer was down. Decent start, but looking at this as the basic layer from which to build.
Ding dong the witch is dead, the wicked wicked reflection witch is dead! Sorta.
Remember, this is a practice session on painting paper, so was just looking to get the hang of a basic (read: decent) reflection in a relatively still pond. Pretty happy with how this came out. Spent an hour of actual painting on this tonight (which brings the total effort to about 3 hours), but remixing the paints was fast b/c I actually made notes from the first session so I could recreate without much effort.
Focused on darker values for most everything in the reflection, which seems to have worked out really well. Initially, I had taken it too far to the dark side, which I noticed once I started on the sienna walls, which were so dark there wasn’t going to be any chance I could get the doors and windows to show up very well in the reflection, even if I had used tube black. The solution was to work some white back into the paint on the “canvas” while everything was still wet – all praise oil paints!
Below is the zoom in view of the reflection area. In addition to the darker values, the lines are also softened so things are more fuzzy. Then I took a dry round #4 brush and pulled some paint from one area into it’s neighbor, i.e. start the brush in the green of the bushes, drag it lightly across the green and into the sienna of the building to give the appearance of a ripple in the water. Next was introducing some of the blue sky into the water, which was simply done with a lightened blue (with white) stroked in random areas of the pool; used a smaller, stiff brush, #2 flat. All the large block sections were also painted with long, broad horizontal strokes. It’s amazing to me how well horizontal strokes can make a surface look like water. The final step was to soften the entire water area by making long horizontal strokes across large sections with a very soft, very wide, very cheap 2″ wide flat brush.
I was genuinely surprised at the effectiveness of the last step with the cheap big brush. I also avoided doing any vertical brush strokes down the reflection area, which simply wasn’t necessary with this type of pond. Might need that for a larger lake landscape, to elongate and distort tree reflections in the water, but for this highly reflective, still water pond, it would have detracted from the composition. This is where things started to fall apart with the Giverny wipeout which was exacerbated by the use of too much paint.
Calling this good and the practice session finished. I’ve now sketched this scene a couple times and painted it once, so I think I will tackle an actual full size painting of this for my next project before attempting Giverny again. I’ll need to distort reality a little bit, though, b/c the composition with the palm tree in the center of the frame is boring. But there are nice curved lines from the palm fronds, and some awesome diagonal lines from both the building and the hedgerow bushes that it could prove to be a very well structured painting that draws the viewer in and through the space. Stay tuned…
Art Bern 