Monthly Archives: January 2015

Jan232015

Getting into Oil Painting… at last!

Howdy!
After months of struggle trying to refine a room and make it decent enough for a painting studio, I made it! Yes-sir. And here is my new studio at last!

I couldn’t wait and immediately got involved with oils. I first make a quick blue/white sketch of some peppers (you can see them on the small table easel in the picture), then another small test of the wet-on-wet technique I saw some videos about on Art Tutor. Well, I liked it, and searched more info about it. That way I came across some amazing Oil Landscape videos by Kevin Hill (see here his website: PaintWithKevin) and eventually found out that he learned thanks to the old PBS tv show broadcasted in the eighties and early nineties, hosted by Bob Ross. His technique is just amazing, I couldn’t help buying some bigger brushes and giving it a try (you can see the beginning on the big easel on the left).

Here is the final result:

Being the first one, I’m “somehow” satisfied. I should have played more with aerial perspective but i ended up with a sea of paint and admittedly had to wipe it off almost to the bare canvas a couple of times. In any case, decent as a starting point!

See you soon with other oils then! …and not only, of course!
Cheers!

P.s. I didn’t use any reference image, it’s just straight out of my crazy brain

Jan132015

Sunset Boat

I just completed the lesson on ripples in the water and noticed the outcome of the final exercise was decent enough to be shared. Ultramarine + Naples Yellow + Burnt Sienna. I used almost all of the brushes I had, mysteriously. And I still can’t get those straight lines perfect, hm!

Jan062015

Watercolor Reflections and water

Continuing with the Art Tutor class hosted by Rob Dudley, I recently practiced painting water. Which might as well sound weird, painting water with watercolors… or not 😀

Whatever it is, getting reflections right can dramatically enhance a picture’s realism. As far as I could tell so far, the key is to paint reflections slightly darker and with less contrast than the real object (due to refraction some light is absorbed by the water). This of course varies depending on the water’s condition, be it clean or muddy.

After several exercises (the one above is the best one really, others were…ugh. I spared you the one color uglies, this is two colors each: lemon yellow + ultramatine, ultramarine + burnet sienna, the same, again lemon, and lastly ultramarine + raw sienna) I went for a complete painting with a limited palette: ultramarine blue + raw sienna + alizarin crimson:

And then, a choppy sea and boats reflections. The first goal was to get the white sparkles/foam, while the second was getting decent (I won’t dare to say believable for these :D) rippled reflections:

Colors are ultramarine only for the boats, ultramarine + phthalo blue for the seas. I also used masking fluid and spattered it all over to get the wavetops in the very first.