Tag: Oil Painting

Art – Swan

After the roller coaster ride of my lovely ladies, I was rather tired. Swans are always beautiful – and as my Art class teacher showed me – white is not white. It is never pure white. It is mostly shades of colours. In this case more of a grey tinge. It was a new and fascinating concept to me, and it applies to many other features as wel..

I learnt that I have to examine carefully the colours of my subject. and a simple way is to punch a hole in a white piece of paper and hold that against your subject. This is a much better representation of the real colours (and so simple). I often put a dab of a paint colour that I have mixed up on the paper next to the hole to judge how close I am (that is if I am going for realistic colours).

Thanks to Nichola for such an easy tool that is so powerful!

Swan Study

Oh, the tribulations of learning how to paint!

After I finished the lion, I decided in a fit of madness , that I wanted to paint a portrait next. I chose a Mongolian girl in a pensive mood. I knew it would be hard, but completely under estimated the degree of difficulty. Proportions, Skin Colours, Highlights and shadows, hair, skin, and so it goes on.

But I tried.

And I kept redoing and redoing – especially the eyes, nose and ear. And it got worse, and muddier. Eventually I gave up on the poor thing. She is now called the “Grumpy Girl”, even though I don’t think she is.

This is the first portrait I attempted (overly ambitious as portraits are really, really hard.) I called her Grumpy Girl (she is actually from Mongolia). Eventually, I gave up on due to frustration at my inability to get her eyes, nose and ear right.

However, I did attempt her again (that is me – perfectionist who refuses to give up.)

Art and Photos

I started going to an oil painting class (which is not running currently due to Corona Virus). While I really enjoy it, it is very complex. All sorts of elements to master and many mistakes to be made in order to progress (methinks). Just as I get the hang of one element, along comes another to completely stymie me. Reading books, websites and watching videos do help; but also can be annoying as they make it look So easy. They mix yellow and blue to get green, I mix yellow and blue to get …. well…sludge.

Anyway, here is my first main effort.

J …… please can we see some of yours? And anyone else?

This is from a photo I took as we were following a lion and two lionesses on the hunt. Unfortunately we lost them, but I love the inside of a lion’s mouth (from far away).