The Next Painting

I've been busy entering shows/competitions lately so I haven't had anything to blog about for a while but there should be another portrait in the works soon...In the next 2 weeks if I stay on top of things. I've been planning a full length portrait of my brother which will be fairly large. That's a scary thing for me because I haven't done anything like that in years--I work much smaller these days. But I think a larger scale portrait is necessary for me right now just to take things up a notch. The other thing I'm worried about is buying more brushes since I only have sizes for smaller scale paintings. I'll need a few large brushes and if you're a painter you know that can get very expensive indeed. It's all for a worthy cause though and I can't wait to start!

New Self-Portrait: It's Finished!

Blogger really doesn't show these pictures well at all but here it is. It's all done and now I have to find something else to start. I've been wanting to do a life size portrait from head to toe for a long time so I think I'll do that next but I'd like to do some drawing in between. Thanks to everyone who checked out my work here and stay tuned!

New Self-Portrait Painting (In Progress) Part 4

Since my last post, I've done my hair, the dishes in the cabinet, the background, the chair, and a bit of my left earring. You can see there's a lot of glare from the sun. I'm hoping I can get this done by Sunday because it needs to dry and get a retouch varnish.

New Self-Portrait Painting (In Progress) Part 3

A lot has progressed since the last update and I think I'm halfway there. I need to do more on the face and other parts but I thought I'd oil out some areas first using linseed oil so I could see the correct values again. Right now my favourite part is the top I'm wearing because I really got that satin texture right, YAY! I'll post detail shots later on. Also as a result of oiling out, some mistakes popped up. That "mustache" looking part, for example, only showed itself after oiling out so I have to fix it. Could you imagine me doing the final varnish and mistakes like that one popping up? And no time to fix it??? So glad I'm avoiding that!

New Self-Portrait Painting (In Progress) Part 2

This is actually my 2nd attempt at the face, I won't bother showing you the first. It was really tight and stiff before. I hated it so much I tried to sand it down but I just painted over it. I have renewed faith in this painting and my skills in general, lol. For anyone who's curious, these are the colours I used for my skin:

Base: Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ocher Pale, Alizarin Crimson, Ultra Marine Blue Deep (Old Holland).

Shadow: Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine Blue Deep.

Lights: Titanium White, Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Sienna

That's the head so far and tomorrow I'll be working on it some more plus a bit of the background if I really push myself.

New Self-Portrait Painting (In Progress)

I started this painting on the 17th, and this is how it looked yesterday. Now the real work begins. I need to straighten lines, get my skin tone going and a lot of other things...

Figure Practice

I haven't been able to be in front of a live model in forever but I heard about posespace.com and I used a pose from there to do this study. It's not the same experience as it could be from life but it'll do for now. This one is in charcoal. I learned a lot from this one just by using compressed charcoal; I found out I don't like it. I prefer carbon pencils much more.