Red Shade

One more before I move onto paintings of a more airy nature.  Like so many other pictures I've painted, when I saw the original, I wondered when I was going to paint it.  Notice I said when, not if.   Since I've been struggling with portraits anyway, it was a perfect pairing.  

I knew I would have trouble in two areas.  First, of course the hair.  Secondly, the hand.  I painted several layers of skin (yes, I'm very happy that I got a good skin tone, and not just a yellowish, pinkish tone).  I left a little bit of a hard edge to some of them, but I don't think that matters very much.  The jacket came next.  I needed to have a color different than the skin and different from the hair.  Accomplished.  The hand needed a few details.   I have a friend who tells me, "Suggest, don't State." and so I dind't try to get the hand exactly perfect, rather just some lines and a little shading.  I actually think it works.  Lastly  the hair.  A lot of hair.   Normally my hair looks like a blob of color with some streaks in it.  This time I really tried to make it look super real.  I think I probably made about 20000 brushstrokes on her hair.  (OK that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but not by too much.)  I didn't want all the hair flowing in the same direction, and I didn't want it all the same color.  I tried to vary it with 3 to 4 different colors.  

Well, all in all I think I did a good job, maybe not stellar, but I bet, better than most.  Hope you enjoy.

Another Portrait

This painting for sale 9x12 $30

First off, I think this looks a bit odd because I didn't paint quite enough of his neck, but what the hay.  I painted this in the way I am gonna try to do all my paintings from now on.  I got the paper wet, and then let the paint do what it do on the paper.  I actually have about 5 or 6 layers of paint on most of this.  I don't know that I'll be using that many layers all the time, but I'll definitely be using two or three.

I didn't want to overdo the beard and hair for fear of doing too much too it.  I still might go back and draw in some individual hairs with a pen, but basically, what you see is what you are always gonna get.  I might go back and make the eyebrows a bit bigger too.  But again, I might just wanna leave it this way.

Here is the picture that I started with.  Sorry, hat I forgot to take it as just a drawing.  You can see part of the first layer of paint, though.

Here is the picture mostly done.  Interestingly, you can see that I took the picture with his beard just a bit wet. As the paint dries it lightens up, so you can see that it is much darker here.  Also, he looks a bit devilish with no eyeballs.

I had a great time painting this one, hope you have a great time viewing it.

Female Face

This painting for sale. 8x10 $20

Inspired by February's portrait painting challenge, or maybe by re-finding an artists work that I had hoped to duplicate, or getting some inspiration from a newly found friend, I trudged ahead with a new style of painting.  (You may link to the inspirational sites here and here.)

I used a lot more water than normal, and allowed the paint to do whatever it is that the paint does on the paper.  I'll admit to not being the most proficient with this right now, but  I love this style of painting.  I'm gonna be doing more, so get ready.

Portrait

Ok, so, the art site to which I subscribe holds monthly competitions.  This months topic is portraits.  I've never really done portraits, and as such wanted to give this a go.  I did a quick search for portraits on google and a portrait similar to this popped up.  I hope I did it justice.  There are a few things I really like about it.  One is, I think the shading on the shirt is great.  with just a few strokes of color, it totally looks like there is a collar on the shirt and a few button holes.

The nose was intersting to do.  I didn't really draw a nose, just figured if I shaded everything but the nose, it would have to stand out and look like a nose.  I'm not about to say I nailed it, but I think I had a great first effort.  What do you all think, leave a comment.  Thanks, and as always, enjoy.

buffalo wings

Today the Cal Poly Urban Sketchers met in the Biological Sciences Museum to do a little sketching.  After looking around at all the animal heads on the wall, I settled on this.  It is an African Buffalo.  It is really a dark brindle color, but I didn't want to make it quite that dark for fear of it becoming too dark.  I think this way it gets the point across.

As you can tell, it's really just a head.  It is hanging over the door, which i neglected to put into the picture.  From the size of the head, I have to believe that the beast is enormous with the hind 3/4 attached.  I definitely think our group will be back to paint again really soon.

Red (or greed) Again

Watercolor 7 1/2x9.  SOLD

Ok, so I had painted this picture, and actually thought it was not too good.  So, being the good watercolorist, decided to do something about it, and since my medium is watercolor, was able to do something fairly easily.

The first thing I did  was get most of the picture wet.  Then I began scrubbing off the old background.  I was able to get most of it off without too much trouble.  The only parts that didn't come off too well were the parts around the leaves.

Next I wanted to try out a new technique.  I actually tried it at lunch today on a different painting, and it work out really well.  (A little backstory.  We have a   faculty member here who is a professional watercolorist.  One of the things he does it make strong delineations around his subject.  Having a strong color and then blending to a light hue at the edge makes for a very dramatic painting.)  I tried his technique here and It worked out pretty good.  I couldn't make the light are too light because it would show the paint that I couldn't lift off.  but even so, the bird pops out of this painting, and looks 100X better than the previous one did.  I'm glad I took the time to do this.  Hope you all enjoy it.

A Pair of Knockers

I thought these would be a bit easier than they turned out to be.  I don't know what happened to the blue knocker on top.  up close, its a bit much to behold, but actually if you look from afar, its not too bad.  I started with an old rusty door knocker on what was a grey/blue door.  As I drew it, i thought i did a pretty good job of it, but as the paint went on, it got a little more odd with each color.  If you are wondering if it is a man or a lion, so am I.  The picture I took it from was a weird amalgam of the two.

The second one is a Lion head holding a ring in its mouth.  I think that is much easier to see.  I think I did a much better job on this one.  I am even kind of proud of the chipped away paint on the door which exposes the wood behind.

Hope you enjoy them.

Catching up with some things

I haven't done much painting lately because work has been so busy.  I am desperately trying to  reclaim my lunch hour and painting.  I thought I would step back and do something simple to start back up, so I did the orange door.  It, of course, didn't turn out like I wanted.  But I still like it, there are some good elements there.  Then I did the little boat, and again, good and bad.  I've been wanting to do some different kinds of paintings for some time, and my friend Carrie was nice enough to volunteer for this painting.  Let me know what you think of these.