I had checked out Carla Co Chua’s Creative Acrylics from the library, and did these small paintings. The flower and mountains are on 6×6 canvas; the sunset is painted on a 6×8 gessoed wood panel.
Painting
Still Life from #PAINTCOACH Patreon
I recently discovered @paintcoach on YouTube, and signed up for his Patreon page after viewing about a dozen of his videos.
One of the first paintings I did was a still life. (I still need to learn how to photograph my work; the glare is from my desk lamp — my “studio” is the same dining room table where I worked my job during the Covid lockdown.)
I like the cup the most — except for the messed-up lip (way too light!). I think I did a better job mixing colors for the lime, but the lemon is completely messed up. I kept fiddling with it, and made it worse.
Bottom line, I’m satisfied with my drawing (though why on earth did I choose Red Oxide as my color?). The downside of drawing, though, is my tendency to paint within the lines, which is part of why my value transitions are so darned harsh.
Color mixing is also difficult when I’m using white freezer paper (an old roll hanging around from years ago) as my palette paper vs. painting on a toned canvas. Just when I thought the color mix looked right (on the “palette”), it looked awful on the canvas. Ugh.
Brushwork is also a challenge.
Painting of the Day: Glass Vase in Gray Scale
Today’s pastel painting was done on Rembrandt pastel paper, using 3 NuPastels: Warm Deep Gray, Warm Very Light Gray, and touches of Warm Medium Gray. This was a value study in preparation of a color piece which I’ll be doing on a sample scrap of Sennelier Pastel Card (bought last year as a part of a sampler from Jackson’s Art).
The original picture in color is below. I also downloaded the Android app Color Grab, and played a bit with color choices. While that was fun, I quickly became overwhelmed at the thought of using so many colors for the vase!
I decided to simplify to an extreme by editing my photo to be grayscale, and then using Adobe Photoshop Elements to posterize the grayscale photo to get the two extremes of values. The posterized version was the reference for my pastel.
I am underwhelmed by the texture of the Rembrandt pastel paper; I do not care for the honeycomb look at all.
