About a year ago, I decided to pursue a lifelong dream of learning how to oil paint. My grandma Billie was an excellent painter and as such has adorned her home with dozens of beautiful landscapes. I've always been a drawer as long as I can remember, but painting has always intimidated me. I've taken watercolor, which I enjoyed, but thinking of my grandma's paintings has always made me want to take an oil painting class. Much research later, I found an Academy that teaches foundations in Classical Painting, so I am learning like the masters! So here is the art lesson...
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| Try as I may I could not get this facing right side up and I don't understand why since it was right-side up in the original file... meh. Anyway, this is a rub out. I had done this before my trip to Peru (along with the grissaille layer) but when I came back, it went missing. When I redid the painting, I forgot to take a picture of the rub out, so this is the old painting. Rub out is achieved by putting a base-coat glaze over the whole painting, and then taking out a rag and "rubbing out" the lights and establishing the relative values. |
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| This is the grissaille layer, which basically consists of an underpainting that is entirely neutral (no color). I only used white and raw umber (and the gradations in between) to do this. This technique was very common in classical painting. |
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| Blocked in some of the dark colors and painted in the cloak/blouse/whatever the heck she's wearing. |
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| Got some color mostly everywhere (except for the eyes, but too far to tell. I like this shot because it shows a comparison. |
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| Brown-eyed girl wearing some modern-day lip gloss. |
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| Got her lips to a more natural color, added her eye color, and added a glaze to her face which warmed her right up. |
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| I tried and tried and could not get a better picture of the finished product - should have taken the shot at the art studio... :( But I brightened up the headdress, added a glaze to her cloak, and added another glaze on her face because after I brightened her headdress she looked like a sickly cancer patient. |
Eventually, I hope to get a high resolution picture of my painting... maybe after I any final changes (I'm letting it sit for a month) and add a varnish. :)
1 comment:
This is just fantastic. I am so impressed. I think you are a really gifted painter! I also found it really interesting to see all the steps it took to get here--I had no idea there were so many underlying layers before the color went on. Thanks for posting this! I love you! :)
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