Well, I couldn’t stand that last painting for Jed Dorsey’s Mini Painting Challenge at Acrylic University, so I redid it using a 6×6 white canvas panel, and sketching out the rocks with willow charcoal. Oh, and then I used (for the first time) acrylic gouache (an intro kit from Holbein). I love the matte effect.
The new painting is far from perfect, but on the whole, I consider it an improvement to the original (comparison below).
And here’s the comparison:
This is the week 6 painting for Jed Dorsey’s Mini Painting Challenge at Acrylic University. It’s based on a photo Dorsey took of a rocky beach at sunset. I used one of my last few 8×8 black canvases because Dorsey paints his version on a black background. (I think I’ve said this before, but I really struggle with a black background; it throws the colors/values off, and you need several coats of paint to hide the black say, against the sky).
I also struggle with beach rocks, and have a couple of PaintCoach Patreon lessons earmarked which focus on beach rocks that I need to do for more practice.
That said, this is my effort, and frankly, it looks quite abstract. Which is not necessarily terrible.
This portrait is from a black and white reference photo that, unfortunately, I cannot remember where I downloaded it from — possibly from the curated Unsplash photos here. In any case, I actually drew this one out entirely by hand (in willow charcoal). Not sure why I chose a yellow ochre-clear gesso background, but I did.
I’m reasonably satisfied with this one — at least she looks fairly human. I can list at least half a dozen things I would want to do differently next time, but calling this done for now.
I’m getting behind on the cloud paintings, and remembering to post them! Here, for Week 3 of Dianna Shyne’s “Cloud Challenge” at Acrylic University, is my effort. The reference photo for this class was a sunset over a body of water.
The portrait comes from the week 43 exercise of Kara Bullock Art‘s Let’s Face It 2018 portrait art experience/class. While I am participating in the 2024 version, and (sort of) participated in the 2023 version, I bought the 2018 set of classes (52 weeks in all) last year. This was one that interested me.
I drew out most of the face last June with pencil, finished it earlier this week with willow charcoal and decided just to get it painted for the practice. (Even though I’m not crazy about parts of my drawing.)
Here’s the completed version, and below I have a set of photos of the in-between phases. (Too often we only see the final work people do, not the messy/ugly intermediate stages. 🙂 )
Here’s the in-progress stages. She looks more than a little sickly, and then I revised all the colors, not following the instructor at all.
The portrait lesson from my “Painting Portraits with Karl Staub” class on Sktchy is now complete. If I had it to do again, I wouldn’t use the Opera Rose/Raw Sienna mixture. I’d go with a pale umber or a light yellow ochre. Or even just a plain white canvas! Anyway, I am mostly satisfied with it — the eyes are better than I’ve done before!
I skipped a lot of the blue and the white highlights the teacher used in the online class; the red background of my canvas made it look like she had red highlights in her hair (as opposed to the black tresses the actual model has in the photo reference used.)
This work-in-progress is again from my “Painting Portraits with Karl Staub” class on Sktchy. I am doing this one in acrylic on a 8×10 canvas. The background is a mix of Opera Rose (Winsor & Newton Galeria) which is a garish bubble gum pink and Raw Sienna. The face was drawn on to the painted canvas, and I’ve done the first layer in Burnt Umber (following along).
These trees are based off an image by Inna Sherman from Pixabay. I stuck with the primary palette (cad-free yellow medium, pyrrole red and ultramarine blue), black and white, but I also used a bit of yellow ochre, mainly for the grasses. I worked it on a 6×8 canvas panel.
This was week 3 for Jed Dorsey’s Mini Painting Challenge at Acrylic University. It’s based on a picture he took of a hazy morning with the grass full of dew, in an area near his home. It reminds me a lot of the English cottage landscape I did at Paint Coach Patreon.
This was done on a 6×6 canvas panel. I used the 3 primaries, plus black and white.
BetterLateThanNeverArt 