Angel Statue

I've painted a few statues in the past and really loved doing them.  This one is no different.   I started with just a bit of paint to put on a base color of this statue.  Then I just painted all the shadows.  I allowed those to give form and shape to the statue.  After several layers of shadows and a little rounding of the edges, this statue looks like it is 3 dimensional.

I also put on a very dramatic background.  Mixing reds and blues around this statue that has lots of yellow and green in it make the image jump off the page.  Contrasting colors will always make images pop from your paper.

Like I said I had a great time with this.  If you want to see how I did it, take a look at the following video.  It's sped up because the whole painting took me about an hour to do, and I didn't want anyone to have to sit through an hour of me talking.   Check it out, its pretty good.

Angel Statue

Here is my latest painting.  It is another statue.  This one of an angel.  She has obviously been outside for a long time and has moss growing on her in places.  I've added just enough details to her body and wings to give her form, but the overall impression I wanted someone to take away is that of her have sat outside for a long time.

I started painting her with a base color of payne's grey for her body, then slowly added in some van dyke brown in some shadowy areas, or anywhere that I wanted to make her a bit warmer.  (as the payne's grey can get a little cold sometime)  I just gave indications of some shadow lines on her body and her wings.  They give just enough detail.  I kept her face as clean and as bright as I could.  I wanted it to be a bit lighter than everything else on the paintings.  This was to make her face the focal point of this painting.   I'll be t you did it subconsciously.  You looked at the entire painting, but your eyes kept coming back to her face.

I'm happy with this painting.  I might go back and make the background even a little darker, which would make her a little lighter by contrast, and therefore jump off the page a little more.  But if I never get around to doing that, I'm happy with what I have here.

If you have not seen my video of this painting,  I've got a link below.  Thank you, and I hope you enjoy it.

Angel Looking to the Heavens

SOLD!!

I had a challenge to paint a statue this month.  I looked at what seemed like several hundred pictures of statues and this one kind of stood out to me.  The original picture was really a lot larger and the figure has wings that extend off the right.  I wanted the face to be kind of what your focus was drawn to so I shifted the picture a bit (meaning I had to lose the wings).  I don't really think it matters. I like that you can really see that this person is hanging on a cross, and you can just imaging the robes hanging down from his/her arm.

Finding the reference photo was a bit of work, but once I found it, I immediately knew how I was gonna paint it.  I had a great time painting it and hope you had a great time viewing it.

Angel's Landing

Some good and some bad on this painting.  Lets start with the good.

I was gonna do a dark sky, or at least darker, but when I saw how this one turned out after only one layer of paint, I liked it so much I stopped.  And knowing what the sky looks like in Zion most of the time, there are no clouds anyway, so the sky seems about right.  The next thing that is really good, I think, are the mountains in the background.  They really do look like they are far away.  Just enough detail so you can see a few crevasses in the rocks, but not too much detail that its out of place.  I really like them.

Now for the not so good.  I don't think i got quite the right shape of this hill.  It is, in general, dome-ish, which I got, but somehow its not quite right.  I might go back and see if I cant make the far side of the path fall off just a bit, maybe that will help it look like it is rounder.

I might go back and pencil in some chains like on the real pathway, but I don't have time to do it today, but wanted to get this picture up.  If I make changes, I'll repost.  Hope you all enjoy.