Union Station, Renwick Gallery, More Doors

Today I took a sketching excursion with the new sketchbook my friend Miko bought for my birthday. I love this. It's worth the money for the nice paper and if I see any thing like these, I'm buying 100...

First was a stop at Union Station. A kid about 7 or 8 years old stopped to look at my drawing. He was funny and we talked about drawing tigers. But no tiger drawings for me today.

Next I ventured over by the White House and plopped myself down in the Caribou coffee (it's really hot!) and sketched the Renwick Museum. 

I had never been inside the Renwick before and had actually brushed it off as the "craft" museum, but it's actually REALLY cool. They have an exhibit right now of a contemporary artist doing stained glass images that I can only describe as macabre. Worth a visit, won't take long.

Anyhow, this is a painting sketch based on a piece in their permanent collection.

Lastly I finished the painting of the door! This is based on another photo from my time in China, specifically in an area of historical Tibet. I am a little concerned that the paint is drying much darker and flatter than I expected, so pending how it looks when it is completely dry, this bad boy is finito!

Back to Reality

Hi friends. I did some traveling to Ocean City and Chicago for a while so sadly, I didn't do much drawing. There was too much fun and food to be had. But back at it.
Progress made on this oil painting. It's an 18 x 24 canvass, which is a a pretty standard size cheap canvass, but I really am happy with how it's progressing. I apologize for the poor quality of photos on some of my posts. It's hard to photograph art, especially when the paint is still wet. I have a whole setup I can do to take better photos but it takes a lot of time to set up and it takes up too much space to leave out all the time.

I've also been watching LOTS of TV shows while painting. If you have suggestions on shows I can watch that I don't REALLY have to pay attention to, please pass them along (example: 30 Rock, The Office, Archer, etc. Comedies are obviously a trend since they don't usually have very deep plots to follow).

Additionally while in Chicago, my good friend Helen and I happened across an artist selling his work. He had written "Art Sale!" with arrows on the sidewalks in chalk, so of course we went!
Turned out to not only be an incredibly friendly guy but very talented in my opinion. I bought 3 of his paintings, these are 2 x 2 blocks with canvass. All acrylic. I love the texture and colors. I don't usually go in for "abstract" stuff, at least not what i would want to buy, but I couldn't walk away from these.

He told me I could find him on facebook as Paul Lou the Poet. I don't know if I wrote it down wrong but I can't actually find him! Where are you Paul?! If you happen to find my blog, please contact me so I can give you due credit! :)

Caution Wet Paint

Phase 2 of the painting I started last week is complete! But now it needs to dry again for a while I can deal with a certain amount of wet paint for this, but at some point it's just getting too muddled. I want the highlights on this one to really pop.

Also any guesses what this is a painting of?

Also you'll notice things will have watermarks from now on. I had been concerned about the "safety" of my images as it was, but that was doubled by the fact that some people in the UK are apparently stumbling upon my blog through some search terms (it's all in the blogspot stats people!). Will anyone actually steal my images? Who knows, but I would certainly prefer not. 

I don't think the watermarks particularly interfere with the art. If for some reason you want to see an image without it, let me know I would be happy to email it to you separately!

Party Party Paint Paint

I binged on painting today. I think I painted for about 5 hours? All I know is that after 3 hours Hulu was basically like "Hey maybe you should take a god damn break and stop watching tv." Don't tell me what to do Hulu.

I finished 2 of the paintings I started last week. And please take my short survey about the blog!

I'm fairly happy with this although I don't think I captured the emotion nearly as well as I did in my earlier sketches. I may revisit it later but for now, I'm calling this one done.

As for the 2nd painting I'm quite happy with how it turned out. The paint is still wet so I don't think this image captures the colors very well. I couldn't get a good photo without all the wet paint shining back too much.

Here's some details from the painting. Enjoy!

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.