A Thursday Night Painting

Tonight's painting is a 9 by 12 canvas panel loosely replicating a work of Benjamin Haughton. The first pass at this was typical of what I have been doing recently. I paint the sky first, and it is fairly easy to do a semi-realistic sky. Then I move on to the foreground of the painting, which I want to be in a more impressionistic style. As a result, I have been finding that most of my recent paintings have had an inherent clash of styles within the work. This was no different. Impressionistic foreground. Realistic sky.

So I went back and repainted the sky in a more impressionistic style.

It might not be great, but at least when I was finished, the work looked consistent within itself.

Overlooking the Water

Another lesson learned.

Two More Little Paintings

On Tuesday night I did two more small studies in acrylics. I think (I'm forgetful in my advancing years!) that these are both also done after works by Isaac Levitan. If not...I apologize, but I'm too lazy to go back and credit them properly. Could be Benjamin Haughton, but I don't think so... (that's Thursday night's painting).

The first is a shoreline scene on a 9 by 12 canvas panel. I think this is one of the paintings that comes closest to the style that I would like to paint in at this point. I like this one about as well as anything I have done...

Shoreline

The second is a small 6 by 8 canvas panel... I like this but I might go back and tweak the top of the tree line a little bit. It bothers me because it looks too uniform. [Edit - tree line has been tweaked] 

Fields and Distant Treeline

Anyway, happy Thursday, and don't forget to vote.

Autumn Impression

I knocked this out last night between dinnertime and the Eagles Thursday night game. It's acrylics on a 9 by 12 canvas panel. I like it well enough that I am going to do a larger version, and will take my time doing a better job.

Autumn Woods

This one might be a little more cheerful...  At least the colors are brighter.

Copying More Skies

I've been enamored in recent days with the paintings of Isaac Levitan, a 19th century Russian landscape painter, and have done a couple more rough sketch copies of his works. The first is a 6 by 8 inch canvas panel. The second is an 8 by 10 inch stretched canvas.

Amp says they are nice, but they make her sad.

Ominous Sky

Which is not the intended affect. Painting them makes me happy.

Bright After a Storm

That said, for whatever reason, I am drawn to these kinds of admittedly dark and dreary landscapes.

Maybe tomorrow I will paint something happy. Or perhaps more of this.

October is turning into sky month.

A Bit More Painting

Amp and Grace were at a socially distanced parking lot performance thing for the Drama Club on Saturday evening, so I had a lot of time Saturday afternoon and into the evening. So I sat at the dining room table and worked on an acrylic painting. And then another. And then three more. By the end of the day, I had spent maybe 4 hours or so painting, off and on, and had completed five small paintings.

All five are either based on or copied from paintings by Isaac Levitan, a 19th century Russian landscape artist. They are shown below in the order that I painted them. All were intended to be impressionistic sketches. 

The first is a winter lakeshore scene, done on an 11 by 14 stretched canvas.

Winter Lakeshore

The second is a small seascape on a 5 by 7 canvas panel.

Headlands

The third is a rural road scene on an 8 by 10 stretched canvas.

Country Cart Path

The fourth is a seascape with clouds on an 8 by 10 stretched canvas.

Fading Light

The last is a small scene of trees and reflective water on a 6 by 8 canvas panel.

Reflections

None of these are high art by any means, but as I paint more, I am getting more confident. And maybe a little better also. As I get a little better, it gets less frustrating.

A Bit of Painting

For better or worse, here's a few pictures of things I have been working on recently. All are acrylic paintings, done using Golden heavy body acrylics on stretched canvases of different sizes.

The first, an Italian wine country landscape, has been in process since probably February or March. I have meandered about, changing the foreground, changing the mid-ground, and in general just being indecisive about where I am going with this one. There is still some cleanup to be done in the foreground, detailing of the wall, and figuring out what exactly to do with the weird patch in the center of the mid ground. Oh well, it's a work in progress... This is a 16" by 20" stretched canvas, so it is larger than most of the practice pieces I am doing these days. It has occurred to me at various points that if I chopped the bottom third off of the painting, I would have been done months ago. My level of satisfaction with this one is medium-ish. If I can finish the bottom portion the way I hope to, that could get better.

Italian Landscape - in process (still...)

The second is an 8" by 10" autumn scene (small stretched canvas). The original painting of this took about 2 hours on a weekend morning in late August or early September. The never-ending fiddling with it has taken the last 6 weeks or so, 10 minutes at a time, with days in between. It has definitely been a case of knowing where I want to end up with it, but not having the technical skill to get there. There is also something to be recognized in the limited ability to fix things that have got wrong early in the painting process after the fact. Amp chuckles at this one as the Little Painting That Will Never Be Done... Well, for better or worse it's done. My satisfaction level is medium-high on this one. Mostly because I know where it used to be compared to where it ended up. With a critical eye and a willingness to not let it go, it got better. I should note that this is a copy(-ish) of a painting video from Gebahi Artworks on YouTube. His is better (shockingly)...

Autumn Path

The third painting is a spring/summer landscape on an 8" by 10" stretched canvas, done this morning in about a half hour. While Amp (and I, from time to time) watched Rafael Nadal win his 13th French Open title and 20th overall Grand Slam, I wanted to throw some paint on a canvas in a very impressionistic style, with simple colors and bold brush strokes. As far as that goes as a goal, I would consider this a huge success. After the initial painting, I would wander back into the dining room from time to time and spend a few minutes adding a little but here and there, but it is certainly fair to say that this was painted in a total of less than 60 minutes of actual working time. I like it. Personal satisfaction level very high. And it was FUN to paint something like this quickly and with no regard to nit-picking details. 

Summer Landscape

Colors used in the third painting... The sky was only ultramarine blue and titanium white. Distant hills were only viridian green hue and titanium white. Foreground got more complicated. Permanent green light and indian yellow hue were the basis of the greens/yellows, with sap green, cadmium red medium hue, and burnt sienna filling in most of the rest of the foreground colors. Burnt umber and titan buff made the path, with cadmium yellow medium hue highlighting the bright yellows. As best I can remember. I have a lot of Golden colors on my dining room table...

Anyway, the learning experience continues. It is equal parts frustrating and exhilarating to be on the steep front end of the learning curve of how to execute a painting. The quality of my critical eye still vastly exceeds the quality of my painting ability. But I can take some comfort in the fact that I am getting better, on average, I think.

More importantly, I am having fun. With age (hopefully) comes some degree of wisdom, and I am enjoying the challenge of learning something new. I am reveling in the journey and not focusing on the destination.

Copying Art, and Different Media

As I've been spending all of this time drawing, painting, thinking about drawing, thinking about painting, watching YouTube videos about.....etc, a couple of questions keep lingering at the fringes of my consciousness. The first question is...should I be concentrating on one kind of painting instead of dabbling in oils, acrylics and watercolors? Second, should I be spending less time copying other peoples' work and more time on creating my own original works?

At least at the moment, I think...

Dabbling in a number of different media is an invaluable learning experience. I might end up being better at some things than others. I might end up enjoying some things more than others. But you won't be able to get a feel for that unless you try different things. In that respect, I literally am a middle school or high school student. At this point I am content to immerse myself in as many different media as possible in the expectation that a path forward, at least in the immediate term, will reveal itself. If not, the dabbling continues, which is also fine, and will continue to be valuable.

Oils. I am loving painting in oils. You can blend for days. Literally. They are forgiving in the sense of being correctable while still wet (which again, is for days). There is a richness that you can't get from watercolors or acrylics. They are the classical media if you are into the snob-appeal thing. But they are finicky. And they are the one media that I wouldn't feel comfortable doing on my desk in my office or on the kitchen table. They are messy and complicated. But they are soooooo good.

Acrylics. I alternately love and am immensely frustrated by these. It's great that they dry so quickly from the perspective of adding to your work in layers. But they dry so quickly. You need to know what you are doing and commit, or the moment is gone. Blending is hard. I know there are various mediums and additives that will prolong working time, etc, but I am not that sophisticated yet. Quirky but fun.

Watercolors. Perhaps the most mysterious of the three painting media that I am fiddling with, at least to me. So simple looking. So hard to do well. Perhaps even more so than acrylics, you get one chance to do it right. In my very limited experience, you can fix errors in oils or acrylics, but not so much so in watercolors. Or not at all really. I have to admit watercolors intimidate me more than oils or acrylics. Easy to do kinda OK. Probably the hardest for a beginner to do well.

As for the second question, copying versus original pieces, that's a simpler answer, at least for the moment. I am so early on my learning curve that I just want to try as many techniques and styles as possible. I don't want to spend too much time worrying about composition or other considerations. I just want to practice. Almost everything I do these days is simply an attempt to answer the question "can I do that?"

For now, that's fine. It won't be forever. But it is for now.

Acrylic Sketching

I'm too far down the road to stop posting anything and everything at this point, no matter how insecure I might be about sharing these, so...

I have done (and posted) some simple impressionistic marker sketches. I wondered after dinner today what the equivalent would be in painting. So I got out some acrylics and a small 8" by 10" canvas and painted the below in about 20 minutes. I used only a #14 (about 1/2 inch) flat brush and a half dozen colors (mostly the 3 primaries and white).

Lavender fields in Provence

This was incredibly fun and freeing, regardless of the quality of the result. (Inspiration photo below - everything brighter...)

Provence...

I need to do more of this. Perhaps on canvas paper pads rather than actual canvases to cut down on the cost, but...

Castello Banfi Progress May 8

This is where this painting is at the moment, and this is where it will probably remain until my Jerry's Artarama order of more Golden Heavy Body acrylic paints arrives.

I am roughing in the midground of the painting, which mainly consists of vineyards and fields in the middle distance. This section isn't done yet, but it gives a better impression of where I am headed than the simple color blocking that it is layered over.

Roughing-in the midground

There is a lot of detail that needs to be added, but it's starting to feel better. Some shading, some highlighting, and more work in the very middle...

Roughing-in Vineyard detail

Getting there. Maybe half done. Maybe a little less than that...

Castello Banfi Progress May 6

I've made a little progress on the Castello Banfi acrylic painting over the last couple evenings. I am taking it slow and steady, but I am pleased so far. I think it looks good.

I have focused on a small but critically important area of the painting; the buildings at the top of the hill, and the trees and bushes along the painting's horizon. It's been a challenge in that I don't have that many different colors of acrylic paint, and I have had to mix all of my greens from a base of chromium oxide green, or blue and yellow primary colors. I have a lot to learn about color mixing. I watch artists on YouTube paint with 3 or 4 colors and I am dumbfounded...

Castello Banfi Detailing - Close Up

As I look at it now, and in pictures, the shadows are more red than I would like. I will either have to attempt to correct them to a more brownish shade, or live with them as they are. On the one hand, it nags at me. On the other hand I should probably leave well enough alone at least until the first pass at painting everything is complete.

The foreground remains simple blocking in of placeholder colors. Don't worry, it will get better. I hope. On second thought, as I said yesterday, hope is not a plan. So... It will get better. Promise.

As an aside about the whole color mixing issue, I am helping to keep some tiny part of the economy going by mail-ordering 10 tubes of Golden Heavy Body acrylics from Jerry's Artarama (my 5th order in the last 2 months...). Since my main interest is in landscapes, I have picked out a nice selection of greens, browns, tans, grays and a black. Easier starting points for color-tweaking, if not color mixing.

Starting a new Painting - Castello Banfi

My next larger effort will be a 16" by 20" acrylic landscape based on a photo of Castello Banfi in Italy. This is a beautiful hilltop winery in Montalcino, in the Brunello region of Tuscany. Amazing pictures from all angles are easy to find.

First step is to sketch in the basic layout of the painting, and then to put in a basic sky. This is too monotone at the moment, but it will get some additional detail.

Sketch and Sky

The second step was to block in the building colors of brightly lit, shadowed and rooftops before the sketch detail of this got lost under the paint. It did occur to me after painting to the point covered by these pictures that I didn't spray the under-sketch with a workable fixative prior to painting. It will be interesting to see how much graphite bleed-through I end up seeing. (I wonder if I could spray it now without harming anything...)

Blocking in Hilltop Buildings

Close up of the color-blocked buildings.

Color blocking the buildings

The third stage is to do the first stage of underpainting, blocking in some of the ground colors.

Rough color blocking

I tend to look at this and say "blech", but I need to keep reminding myself what most art tutorials on YouTube are telling me - most paintings will look bad most of the way through the process until they start to come together near the end. That's an encouraging thought.

I would estimate that I am no more than 10-20% done this one. Probably closer to 10%.

Pastoral Fields

Covid-19 Day 45.

Yesterday's art effort was the start of a new oil painting. Today's effort is a smaller (11" by 14" canvas) work in acrylics. This was done in ~3 hours (8am to 11am-ish) using a small assortment of recently-acquired (via Jerry's again) Golden brand heavy body acrylics. It is, like yesterday, a copy of a painting posted recently on YouTube by CLIVE5ART. I copied it pretty faithfully.

This is very different than yesterday's bleak landscape, and seems quite soothing and peaceful to me.

Pastoral, Late Afternoon (11" by 14", after CLIVE5ART)

The main goal of today's work was to get a better feel for how to blend quick-drying acrylics. In other words, how to get acrylics to behave more like oils.

I am finding acrylics to be difficult. Probably because I expect them to behave more like oils. So...a circular problem...

As is typical I suppose, there are some things I like, and some I like less. The color of the water needs to be fixed. I don't like how the weave of the canvas shows through under the brush strokes in so many places in the foreground. I pretty much like the top half of the painting, from the mid ground up to the sky. I asked Amp if I should even try to add the sheep, or just leave it as an empty landscape. We agreed I should try to add the sheep. I'm glad I did; I love the sheep.

This should be done, but I probably can't help but to go back and tweak some things. Dull the color of the river to make it more realistic, possibly (although maybe that misses the point of this happy little painting...perhaps water in this mood should be bright blue?). I'm tempted to add more paint in the foreground to cover the canvas weave, but that's a no-win battle at this point. Lastly, I'm thinking that there should be a herding dog, probably dark brown, in the sunny yellow patch at the left foreground. Compositionally, this would add a missing element on the left foreground to help anchor things.

I'll post the end result soon.

P.S. - I don't know that this is the "best" of the handful of works I have created since I started my new painting journey, but I would have to say that I like it the best. It is propped on a chest of drawers in our front hallway, outside my office, and every time I walk past it I look at it and smile. Which I suppose is what art is supposed to do...

Oil and Acrylic Painting

I have always wanted to learn to paint (especially in oils), but as with many other things I would like to learn to do throughout my life, the actually doing it part seems to always be "some day". Well, there's no time like the present, and I ain't gettin' any younger.

Taking advantage of sales at the local Michael's and the awesome Jerry's Artarama store in Newark Delaware, I bought enough basic supplies to attempt both some oil painting and some acrylic painting. With a  limitless trove of YouTube advice and tutorials, including all 30+ seasons of Bob Ross' Joy of Painting series, off we go...

Painting #1 (oil on 9x12 canvas panel). My first ever attempt at a painting of any kind (mid-February 2020). It was done in one sitting, and was when I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I bought some oil paints and sat down to paint something. This was the result. I tried to do a Bob Ross style painting, but without any of the tools to be able to do the Bob Ross method, which is a very specific technique. It's beginner-friendly. If you have the right tools and supplies. Which I didn't (at the time). The best I can say of it is that parts of it aren't terrible, and more importantly I learned a lot about oil paints. Mostly about what you can't do, which frankly isn't a bad place to start.

#1 - Mountain landscape in oils (small)

Painting #2 (acrylic on 8x10 stretched canvas). Having done a rudimentary oil painting, I tried an acrylic one next, intending it to be some sort of wizard's tower or sage's abode for our D&D campaign. It was an interesting contrast, coming only a day or two after the oil painting experiment. While oils dry in 4-5 days, causing their own set of specific behaviors on the canvas, acrylics dry in no time at all. You can blend oils for days on the canvas. You can blend acrylics for minutes, then things start to get tacky and the paint begins to "break" if you go back over it again while partly dry. Layering is obviously much easier, as a part of the painting can dry while you do another part, and then you can go back to it for the next part without muddying the paint underneath. Once again this was a learning experience in a new medium, and there are some things I like about the painting and a bunch that I don't.

#2 - Sage's abode in acrylic (small)

Painting #3 (oil on 16x20 stretched canvas). My first attempt at a Bob Ross style wet-on-wet painting. It is similar to Season 1 episode 13, although not an exact copy. His technique is remarkably easy to get a passably good result for an absolute beginner, but there are definitely some things to get used to and some things that Bob mentions but perhaps doesn't stress to quite the degree that would have been more helpful to me. Overall, I am very pleased with the result. I like the sky, I like the mountain well enough, and I love the pond and the shoreline. The trees and bushes are OK in places but not so great in others. All in all, I like it.

#3 - Bob Ross copy in oils (medium)

Painting #4 (oil on 14x18 stretched canvas). A few days after Bob Ross attempt 1, I did this one. I wasn't painting from an episode or a picture, I just sat and did whatever came to mind. It is mostly the Bob Ross wet on wet method with a few other things that I wanted to try. Overall, I am pleased with this one as well, although the distant line of hills is too washed out with nothing in the middle ground to tie it better to the foreground. This one pointed out the need for giving some thought to composition rather than just sitting down, picking up a brush and jumping in. In this method of painting, you paint from back to front, and once you have done the foreground, you can't really go back and fix things behind it that you would like to. So a valuable lesson learned in composition and planning.

#4 - Bob Ross style landscape in oils (medium)

Painting #5 (oil on 8x10 stretched canvas). I had about an hour one evening and wanted to do something a little different, so I used a picture I found online to copy this little impressionistic landscape. It's simple and far from perfect, but I kinda love it.

#5 - Impressionist landscape in oils (small)

Painting #6 (acrylic on 8x10 stretched canvas). Another couple days later I wanted to keep up with practice, and started this small acrylic landscape. I worked on this off an on in small 10-15 minute increments over the course of 4 or 5 days, working from a photo I had found online in a Google image search of something simple like "fertile fields". The photo didn't say where this actually is, but it reminded me of lots of places not too far from home, or someplace farther removed but that I have been to like the Shenandoah Valley. Another good learning experience. By this time I am learning that I need quantity of practice, not quality of end result. In other words, paint a lot to get better.

#6 - Landscape in acrylics (small)

Painting #7 (oil on 18x24 stretched canvas). A fail. This was going to be another Bob Ross-ish mountain scene following along with another YouTuber who paints in similar style. The sky came first and was fine. A big mountain came next and completely went off the rails. I have waited until this dried, and have begun painting over much it so that I can re-use the canvas and start again. Or at least start the mountain again using the same outline. More lessons learned.

Painting #8 (oil on 18x24 stretched canvas). There is a wonderful YouTuber artist named Stuart Davies who does amazing tonalist/impressionist landscapes in a very particular style using a very particular technique. This is not an attempt to follow his technique, but to do a similar kind of painting using more traditional brushwork. Parts of this one I really like, and parts of it I am less thrilled with. But there is nothing about it that I hate.

#8 - Landscape in oils (medium)

I have started another painting or two, and given the current situation, will probably be bored at home and in need of something to do for a while, so I hope to get in a good amount of practice. Having gone over my rudimentary efforts to date, I'll probably go over what I have learned so far and various other thoughts in another post soon.