Phase in

Took a bit of a break for the weekend, which I probably shouldn't have done but oh well.
Today was pretty productive. The challenge of oil painting is that they take a long time, especially if you need them to dry before you can continue.

I sometimes enjoy wet on wet painting, which is where you painting directly into still wet oil paint on the canvass, but I find that I can't get the kind of sharp image I prefer. Wet on dry is much more preferable for me.
So I now have 3 paintings going in various stages, which you can see below. None of these are complete.

Continuation of the painting shown in my previous post. Sort of at "phase 2"

Detail of the figure, I'm hoping to really bring home the emotion of the original photo, but the paint needs to dry some

Phase 1 of a painting. This is purely background. This pretty much needs to completely dry before I can continue, so it will probably be about a week before I go back to this. This is oil on canvass paper.

20 x 24 canvass, "prepped" for a new painting. Just a light wash in a warm brown.

The cap on my tube of white paint broke! Hopefully this will keep it from drying out...

This is the problem with an apartment as a studio. I'm starting to run out of places to put things. Especially to dry.

The Creative Process

EDIT: For whatever reason the photos in this post have consistently come up in google searches and people seem to randomly find my blog. Please don't steal my photos! I appreciate it.

Today's post is mostly about painting process, because I've ventured back into oil painting, which is generally much more time intensive, so I don't have a finished product.

Remember when I said I have a problem with buying art supplies? Well I wasn't freaking kidding. This is about half of my art supplies (since most of it isn't even visible). Every kind of "mark making" tool you can come up with, I probably have...in multiples.

 

Seriously who the f*** needs this many paintbrushes? What was I thinking? Oh wait I wasn't... Amazingly there are no repeats in paintbrushes, with the exception of 2 detail brushes because they tend to get wrecked so easily. Oh and these are just my oil paint brushes. I have completely different ones for watercolors.

If you are venturing into painting, don't mix your brushes if you can help it. Getting acrylic and oil and other paints on the same brush can quickly deteriorate it.

As for ACTUALLY painting, I had a lot of fun mixing paints today.

Black paint you say? True, it IS black paint, but it's actually mixed from ultramarine blue and burnt sienna. In other words dark blue and brown make black!

Why mix black?

It was a trick taught to me in high school (and sadly never pointed out in college. wtf?) But it does create a "richer" black. Black paint from the tube can often go flat on a canvass in comparison with all the other colors you probably mixed. So why not mix a chromatic black? There are actually other combos that work too but I like the way this one turns out.

Similarly, mixing flesh tones is tough. Take brown, add white to taste, right? Blegh. That's for lazy artists (Yeah I'm calling you out. haha). It's actually more like this:

I usually start with a lot of white and add a little red (I actually don't have the best red for this) until you get an awful cotton candy color. Then add a little cadmium yellow and the color quickly turns to a familiar peach flesh tone, although it's pretty "cartoony" at this point.

Then a little ultramarine OR a little of the right green. I haven't heard of many people using green, but I think it results in a better Asian skin tone. Then finally add bits of yellow ochre, burnt sienna or burnt umber.

Voila, instant flesh! I've been guilty of putting paint directly on my arm to make sure the color seemed right. Not really suggested, some of this stuff is actually kind of toxic.

So what the hell was all this for?

Tada! If it seems like blobs of things you would be correct, but I need it to dry a bit before I proceed. Patience is key with oil painting.

 

This is on a piece of canvass "paper." Basically just an 18x24 piece of prepped canvass. It's just taped to a piece of newsprint to keep it from sliding and protect the table.

In other news, I definitely have paint in my hair. Yeah. I missed oil painting.

Volcanos and Tornadoes

The worst kept secret of all artists (painters, illustrators, writers, etc) is that misery is your greatest muse. I am always sad to see the destruction caused by nature. Today's muse was the tornadoes in Joplin, MO and the Puyehue Volcano currently erupting in Chile.

Watercolor and conte

 

First part to an experiment with paper cutting and layering. This is the bottom layer:

Charcoal, conte crayon and chalk pastels

This is the top piece:

And here it is all together

And now for the Piyehue Volcano. If you think I'm exaggerating this madness, check out these photos:
Chile's Puyehue Volcano Erupts

 Charcoal, Conte Crayon, Chalk Pastel

Back to the drawing board

Hooray! Returning to making art today and clearly trying to make up for the last few days of missed creativity.
I also have my new drafting table set up! Bought it off of a friend who is moving and needed to get rid of stuff. Best. Purchase. Ever.

Today's inspiration was my trip to Costa Rica back in March. Some of the amazing things I saw.

One small detail.

I have another drawing I completed but it is a sketch for a more detailed drawing I want to do as a gift for someone. So not gonna show it for now.

Things that go fast

I'm not really a racing fan but I AM from Indianapolis. It's hard to grow up in Indy and not have at least a little fondness for the race and not be familiar with some of the big racing names. So as long as I'm gonna be a couch potato for a while, might as well enjoy the inspiration of colorful cars.

Red bridges and Blue doors

First, thanks to everyone who have been checking out the project. I appreciate the support. I would love feedback! You can either post a comment OR under each post there are "Critique" boxes that you can check to let me know your opinion. 

Finally time to venture into using mediums besides pencils! The nice thing about watercolor is it's easy to do lots of quick studies and if it doesn't turn out well it's not a big deal. So here's 2 I considered successful today.

The first is the door of a church in Hartford, CT. The bright blue doors struck me as unusual.

 

The second one. Well based on the title of this post, I'm sure you can guess. 

 

Lastly, I finished the drawing I began on the train home the other day. I'm actually pretty happy with the results for such a rough pencil drawing. 2B is not my best medium, so this turned out well!

Chihulyisms

Today's sketch brought to you by the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, which currently has a beautiful Chihuly exhibit which I'm probably going to walk through a 2nd time.

 

The little flower was pressed from the arboretum I visited the next day.

 

And just for fun here's a few more from the exhibit