Here we have the first oil painting I've done in several years. I claim moving house, changing jobs, and just being too dammed lazy to muck about with any of it as my excuses.
Still, it felt nice to get back in the saddle.
Things I'm pleased with:
The snake / dragon - This was the first time I had tried painting an object without first having penciled something in. It was also my first attempt at really blending colors to create the shape, rather than 'drawing' lines with dark paint and then coloring inside them. I was also quite pleased with the color palette.
The fire - I'm very happy with the result I got as it was completely by accident. I started with a white base, thinking to do the fire in the style of the water in traditional Japanese tattoos. But I was really unhappy with that and so I scraped it off. As I did so, the white and colors blended and created the effect you can see behind the red lines.
The poem - I'm quite pleased with it. I wrote it on the spot, in pen, but while looking at the painting and then began working it in. I like the suggestion that the dragon is winding in between rows of text, but...
Things I would like to have done better:
The text - It is a lot sloppier than I wanted. Originally, there was no text at all but the canvas felt too empty with just the dragon and the fire, so I added the poem and it was better, but not great. Then I started adding lines and arcs to the shapes of the letters, then added the lines in between and around the letters and eventually got to a state I could live with.
The spaces - If you see the painting in person, it is distinctly two layers. There's the orange background, with the dragon, fire, text, and lines all sitting on top of it. I really wish I had had all the ideas formed so that they could all be present at the same level; given a chance, I'd fill in every space between all the elements so that the entire piece is at the same level.
All in all:
I'm pretty pleased. Most of it came together to look like the image I had in my head, which is always an effort. Also, I learned a ton by working on the snake / dragon. And, last, it was a lot of fun to get the paints out and get something down on canvas again for the first time in a long, long time.
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Thursday, April 29, 2010
What Else?
My friends offered a spot in their show to me and I had nothing new ready. In fact, I hadn't painted anything in about two years due to moves and marriage and jobs and the like. Still, I wanted to participate. So, inspired by the likes of this and this, I opted for my own minimalist design.
The whole thing is done in acrylics, and the hardest part was lining up the tape to get straight lines. It was fun, but it was a rush job and I didn't quite get the reaction I had been hoping for. (The biggest problem was that no one knew what a Saturn V was. When I explained, I got a lot of, "Oh, now I get it." Better than nothing I suppose.)
Anyway, I still like the idea of minimalism and I have a few more ideas, but I think they might be better expressed somehow other than as acrylic paintings.
Painted in Sept. 2009, acrylics on canvas.
The whole thing is done in acrylics, and the hardest part was lining up the tape to get straight lines. It was fun, but it was a rush job and I didn't quite get the reaction I had been hoping for. (The biggest problem was that no one knew what a Saturn V was. When I explained, I got a lot of, "Oh, now I get it." Better than nothing I suppose.)
Anyway, I still like the idea of minimalism and I have a few more ideas, but I think they might be better expressed somehow other than as acrylic paintings.
Painted in Sept. 2009, acrylics on canvas.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Forest Fire
This is just a simple painting, done literally, to cleanse the palate. I had just finished a difficult painting for a friend, at her request and it had taken quite a lot of time and effort to get it to a point I was happy with.
Once finished, I had several colors left on my palate and I had no idea what to do with them, so I just started applying them to the canvas. Once I had the idea that there were trees at the bottom, I started working with the idea that there was a fire in progress. Maybe.
On the other hand, my wife says she thinks it's just a nice autumn day, but either way she likes it. Which is improvement of a sort I think.
Once finished, I had several colors left on my palate and I had no idea what to do with them, so I just started applying them to the canvas. Once I had the idea that there were trees at the bottom, I started working with the idea that there was a fire in progress. Maybe.
On the other hand, my wife says she thinks it's just a nice autumn day, but either way she likes it. Which is improvement of a sort I think.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Cliche
Sometimes quick and easy seems to be anything but. This painting, for example.
I had wanted to paint something my wife would like. Let me clarify: my wife likes my art. Especially when I draw little cartoons and make comics for her. She doesn't really care for my paintings though and I have never really managed to do one that she thought was more than just nice. And by nice, I mean, she might think it's good but just isn't her taste at all. And we have wildly different tastes in art: I like pop-art, with bright colors and odd angles and fragments of things. She likes soft, pretty art - landscapes and scenery and realistic visions.
This painting was an attempt to create something she would like without going outside the boundaries of what I enjoy painting. A compromise, if you will.
After all, isn't that how marriage works? Compromise?
Anyway. The painting started life as a photograph taken by someone whose photo was included in a backgrounds package I got with an old computer. I would credit it if I could, but it was a stock image without any accreditation built in; I had never painted a sunset, for all that they are one of the most visible and cliched images out there and decided that the time had come for me to try my hand at one.
Things started well. I laid down a thin line of each of the colors and then used a small brush to begin to blend them together, taking time and care to clean the brush between color sets so that red blended only to orange and orange blended only to yellow and so on. I gave the background a day or so to dry before laying on the black (actually all the leftover color blended together).
This particular canvas is on the small side, about five by seven inches and I was holding it in my left hand while I applied color with my right. I'm not sure what happened, or why, but I dropped it. Face down.
I was able to salvage most of the background but the palm tree had become unrecognizable. I wiped it and most of the surrounding background paint off and gave it a day or three to dry out.
Once dry, I used a small brush coated in paint thinned to loosen the dried background colors, and then another brush to drag the remaining colors to the left. When that was dry I applied a second layer of background color and eventually was able to replace the palm tree and city scape as well.
Unfortunately, the blending did not take as well the second time around, possibly because of the paint thinner I had had to use, possibly because I was too irritated to concentrate properly.
In the end, I do like the final image, and, more importantly, so does my wife. While I do think it is a cliched image, I learned a bit more about blending and layering, which, really, is the point behind all of this, so I'm calling it successful.
As for the next painting, I've already got an idea in mind, and I know, already, that my wife is going to hate it.
This entry is cross-posted to Smiley's Tropical Escape.
I had wanted to paint something my wife would like. Let me clarify: my wife likes my art. Especially when I draw little cartoons and make comics for her. She doesn't really care for my paintings though and I have never really managed to do one that she thought was more than just nice. And by nice, I mean, she might think it's good but just isn't her taste at all. And we have wildly different tastes in art: I like pop-art, with bright colors and odd angles and fragments of things. She likes soft, pretty art - landscapes and scenery and realistic visions.
This painting was an attempt to create something she would like without going outside the boundaries of what I enjoy painting. A compromise, if you will.
After all, isn't that how marriage works? Compromise?
Anyway. The painting started life as a photograph taken by someone whose photo was included in a backgrounds package I got with an old computer. I would credit it if I could, but it was a stock image without any accreditation built in; I had never painted a sunset, for all that they are one of the most visible and cliched images out there and decided that the time had come for me to try my hand at one.
Things started well. I laid down a thin line of each of the colors and then used a small brush to begin to blend them together, taking time and care to clean the brush between color sets so that red blended only to orange and orange blended only to yellow and so on. I gave the background a day or so to dry before laying on the black (actually all the leftover color blended together).
This particular canvas is on the small side, about five by seven inches and I was holding it in my left hand while I applied color with my right. I'm not sure what happened, or why, but I dropped it. Face down.
I was able to salvage most of the background but the palm tree had become unrecognizable. I wiped it and most of the surrounding background paint off and gave it a day or three to dry out.
Once dry, I used a small brush coated in paint thinned to loosen the dried background colors, and then another brush to drag the remaining colors to the left. When that was dry I applied a second layer of background color and eventually was able to replace the palm tree and city scape as well.
Unfortunately, the blending did not take as well the second time around, possibly because of the paint thinner I had had to use, possibly because I was too irritated to concentrate properly.
In the end, I do like the final image, and, more importantly, so does my wife. While I do think it is a cliched image, I learned a bit more about blending and layering, which, really, is the point behind all of this, so I'm calling it successful.
As for the next painting, I've already got an idea in mind, and I know, already, that my wife is going to hate it.
This entry is cross-posted to Smiley's Tropical Escape.
Friday, January 05, 2007
Summer
Here, at long last, is the latest painting, titled "Summer".I'm pretty pleased with the way this one came out. It very closely resembles the image I had in my head, with a few improvements that occurred as I was painting.
I had had the figure sketched for quite some time, but I was not sure what to do with the background or with the water. Nor was I sure how to best go about getting the very flat, almost cartoonish look of the final painting.
In the end, using tape to seperate colors came to my aid once again, as it gave me the methodology for painting in the background, while experimentation with gauche acrylics and heavy-body white combinations provided the colors and thickness I needed for the flat look.
The one thing that I was vaguely unhappy with at the end was the inconsistency of the black line around the figure, but I finally decided that it was as good as I was capable of making it and that if I had wanted perfection I should have used a computer in the first place. Once again, the old saw holds true - paintings are never finished, only abandoned.
The major struggle with this painting, and one that each viewer will have to decide on their own how successful I was, was to make it sexy without being sleazy. Several shades and applications of paint were put down before deciding on a combination that I felt was sexy but not too sexy.
All in all, I quite like this one, and I finally feel satisfied with the flat, cartoon look that I've been aiming for. While I have several more ideas for paintings in a similar style, I may try a few other things first, just for variety and because, well, trying new things is the whole point of this hobby.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Tea and Oranges Final Version.JPG
I’m not entirely happy with the final color choices, although, like always, it looks a lot better in person. The gold tracing looked really good in my head, just not so good on the canvas. Still, overall, I’m pretty happy with it.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Hawaii
I started with the sky, mixing orange, yellow, red, crimson and a little bit of titanium white. I then layered in the ocean and the mountain / volcano.
The end result is not entirely what I wanted. On the other hand, since I started with no real idea of what to paint, I guess I can't complain too much.
This was done on an A3 canvas with oils, in about two hours.
The end result is not entirely what I wanted. On the other hand, since I started with no real idea of what to paint, I guess I can't complain too much.
This was done on an A3 canvas with oils, in about two hours.
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