Thursday, January 22, 2009

Hothead


This one is the perfect example of how best laid plans can go awry. As you can see by the blurry pic of my palette below, I had entertained thoughts of a strong red presence in the painting. Specifically the water tower to the right. It just didn't work, taking away the area of focus, which is the train of course. Scraped that part and toned it way down. Why didn't I see this when laying out my palette and planning the painting? Will this knowledge come with old age?


Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Fireboat

Abandoned






This one is quite large for me. 24" x 48".

Limited palette of:
Cad Yellow Medium
Ultramarine Blue
Alizarin Crimson
Burnt Umber
Yellow Ochre
White
Black

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Self Portrait - Work in Progress


Is this it? I'm tired of messing with it, so yeah, probably.


I think this one is done. It is signed, but that won't stop me from correcting anything that needs to be. ;) Learned so much from this one. It will definitely carry over to my paintings that follow.


Adding color and fine tuning shapes, values, etc. Looks like I've got a fat lip, have to take care of that.


Here's another update after about 2 more hours work. You'll notice the color seems a bit different, but is much more accurate as to what the sketch really looks like than the last, much warmer looking, post. The whole idea is to get the drawing correct, while not worrying about the color, which will be added soon. Total of around 11 hours so far.

Any thoughts, comments, or suggestions are appreciated.



The above is after the second evening of work. About 8 1/2 to 9 hours into it so far. Will look for glaring measuring and shape problems. If none are found I'll continue with color at the next session.

After measuring yet again this morning I can see where I still need to go wider on my left side (viewers right). I used photoshop, overlaid my sketch onto the ref pic, drew some lines on a transparent layer over the ref, then hid it to see where it matches up on the sketch. As you can see, the nose needs to come up, and a shift to the viewers right on almost everything else. The height of most is correct though.

Interesting to use this method to see where things line up.

By the way, this is oil on 16" x 12" canvas (for a change).




This is a work in progress that I hope will turn out well. I'm gonna slow down for this one, and try to take the necessary steps to end up with a painting I like. My ref photo was taken tonight. Also you'll find the initial block-in that's taken about 4 1/2 hours so far. I thought I had a relatively good one until I re-measured and had to move my eyes down and widen the head. I'm going to try and work on this initial stage another 4 to 6 hours to see if I can get the drawing right before moving to the next step. I know it looks rough now, but hopefully something will emerge with the next session.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Stream with Nude


Not sure if this one is finished yet. It has gone through major changes over the last couple of days.