Tea Pot Still Life

Gesso the canvas, giving the canvas a flat background and allowing the canvas to absorb the oil paint. Next, I tone the canvas with a transparent wash of Burnt Senna. Toning the canvas helps by giving the painting a basic beginning background. After that I design in the abstract. I draw in shapes to corner off areas for each object. I remember to paint off the canvas using up any and all empty space.

Using the "L" shaped view finders to make the exact shapes of objects in the still life. Next, I draw the outside edges making sure that everything is symetrical. This stage involves me giving a more detailed drawing concept. I first draw the box because its the base of the tea pot. I shape the fruit in the bowl. Also draw in the vase and coffee cup. The tea pot is the last one I draw to focus most of my attention on.

The third stage is the most difficult. I start blocking in the local color. I remember to paint dark to light and thin to thick. The first color I paint is the box using burnt senna. Next, I paint in the blue vase with the dark blue paint right out of the tube. I take the blue and orange paint with a little bit of white to create me a gray to start off the daisies. I create a hunter green to show the leaves. I paint in the lemon and oranges with their colors right out of the tube.

Painting II Class

Im really excited about this semester in Painting II. I am looking forward into becoming a better artist. I want to branch off on my own and be more creative with my artwork. Although I still want to work along with the class and develop more details by learning step by step with each painting. I also look forward to being in more art shows. I have noticed last semester that more people enjoy my art and encourage me to do more. I want to break out of my comfort zone and sale a piece of art work, but I feel like its a piece of me and kinda dont want to part with it. Art is a big part of my life, in each class i take i love it more. I hope everyone else enjoys. Feel free to leave comments on my blog of ways i can improve or suggest artwork that you would like to see me do.

Hippie Girl

I started toning the canvas. I used Burnt senna with a little aqua blue paint giving it a brownish- green base to the canvas. Than I began to sketch out the woman's figuare. Starting with the dark spots first. I did not paint the eyeballs in but I drew the areas where the eyes will take place. Like mapping out my painting. I painted her hair but not perfectly, this is just a sketch the details come later. I used all the same paint for this sketch but on her hair i made darker shades, so that you can see the difference between her hair and the shadown on her face.

Next, I painted her eye pupils, again i am not going to put the details in yet. I then worked on the shadows on her lips. Softening the lines so they are not standing out too much. I paint the darker spots and take a clean paint brush and spread it around. I also work on the wrinkles in her clothes. Plus I added the flower in her hair. I heard once that when in Hawaii single women wear flowers in ther hair on one side to inform others they are not taken.

Transparent paint alot of mineral spirits. I used cadmin red and little orange for her face. The whole thing gets a coat. Her shirt and vest, I took burnt senna and dark blue paint and used my brush to show ridges then I took my rag and pulled some of it off swiping it. I took dark red and blue paint to make a purple blouse. Now, to the hair I painted the darker shades and lighter shades with her flesh tone. Which was Orange, serilain blue, white and cadian red. Blocking in I used white to dull it down, but i keep the color. Lips make part of the face. The darkiest color is crimson and cadmian  red, blue and yellow oker.

I wanted to have a garland on her head so I started with an abstract sketch of the flowers in a mixture of white, blue, and orange paint. Then I needed to paint the center of the flowers with yellow orchard and purple. To make the leaves I mixed yellow, blue and yellow orchard. Then I painted in more wrinkles on my clothing with dark purple and dark yellow. Next I fixed my hair so that it looks more realistic being tucked underneath my garland. Then I painted in my background using a prop my landscape painting that i did onsite at Tulsa Community College. Her eyes I used a pointed brush, green, light blue, and orange and a little bit of mineral spirits. I drew the eye brows and part of the pupil. Only the top eye lid. and a little on the eyebrows yellow oker, cerian blue for her pupils.

Apples and a Pot

The first step to my Apples and a Pot painting is to gesso the canvas. Gessos(ing) the canvas helps the canvas absorb the paint. After the canvas dries, I apply burnt senna thin layer to give a simple background. Next, I blocked out the different section for where each object takes place.

The step to the painting is more detailed. I give the object more shape so that you know exactly what you are looking at now. I also drew in the bird that I had not notice before hand in this still life. The background garment was also painted in.

I mixed dark blue and orange paint to make brown background. I made different shades of brown to show the dark and light parts. I work on the Apples with bright red and dark red paint to make a delicious apple. I messed around with the green for the top of the apples with some yellow orchid. Then the bird was two faced witha shadow. I mixed bright red and yellow orchid for the dark and a small amount of white to make the lighter side of the bird.

I started on the cover of the books, their binding, and their pages. The top book, I took bright yellow paint and mixed with alot of mineral spirits. The other book covers plus the outline of the first book, I used a mixture of dark blue and dark red paint giving a purple but very close to dark black paint. Then, I painted the magazine that is locatedunderneath everything else. I mixed orange and dark blue paint to create a gray-ish paint. To show the still-life image on the top of the magazine, I just took a little bit of white paint in the gray to show an image.

I worked on my apples dark to light. The highlights on my apples, I mixed a tad bit of light blue paint with bright red and white. Then I took my paint brush and pressed down on the canvas then I would wipe off my paint brush giving the highlight a swiping look. I fixed one of my apples because it seemed to be formed wrong on the bottom so I painted the top of the blue bowl higher to cover my mistake. Next, I painted on my books. I had to show the different surfaces by the color of the shades on the cover of the books. Plus, I put a shadow behind the bird.

Self-Portrait

I am very excited about painting a self-portrait, that I have never done before. First I had my picture taken then I uploaded it on photoshop. By which, I stylized the picture by playing around with the brightness/contrast and the hue/ saturation. I ended up with a photo with different layers of blue and purple. After I printed the picture and I took a post-it and measured the width of one eye then I used that to measure the sixe of my face. Estimated to around six and a half eyes. On my canvas, I eye bald where I wanted my face to be located than I used the post-it to measure six and a half eyes up to show where the eyes,nose and mouth goes. Then I drew in the rest of the body and background.

I started first by shifting my face upward on the canvas. After, I had every piece of the drawing where I wanted it, I was ready to paint. The best way to paint a self-portrait is by painting one color at a time that way you can actually focus of the shade of the color to give more similarity between your picture and the painting. I started the painting focusing on my darkest color black. I mixed dark red, dark blue and a tiny bit of bright yellow paint. The mixture of the paint gave me a dark violet very close to black. Now I just have to paint so many coats.

I put a second coat of the black paint on the canvas. Which is actually dark blue, dark red and a tiny bit of yellow paint. After that looked like how I wanted, I started painting my right shoulder using basic light blue paint with a thick strand in the middle of my upper arm that was a darker blue to show the the shadow. I move my attention toward my face, because after I do the face if I decide to change something it would be easier to move the shoulders and/or background. I used the same mixture of paint that was for the black but instead I didnt put as much dark paint into it., to make a medium to dark purple for one of the shadows of purple  on my face.

I finished painting the face with four different shades of blue paint. After that I continued downward using the same paint and just mixing a little mineral spirits to expand my amount of paint. After the step of painting my self-portrait, I can really see the whole figuare.

I continued painting with the different shades of blue. I put some pieces of red and pink paint in spots so that they standout. The lighter part of my upper arm, I mixed a little bit of light blue paint with some whitepaint to go along with the other parts of my arms and clothing. The background was much simplier I mixed two different up two differerent shades of gray. Using some blue and orange paint. I really enjoyed painting my self-portrait it allowed me to be more creative than I have been.

Landscape Oil Painting

The first step in painting my landscape, I had to first put gesso on my canvas. The gesso helps the paint stay on top of surface of the canvas instead of bleeding in. The secret to using gesso is spreading thin layers along the canvas covering it completely. In this picture, you will notice how secondly I had to tone the painting. I took burnt senia and a large paint brush and brushed the paint along the canvas. A little bit goes a long way, thin layers are always best.

Next, is the abstract drawing. By following the structure of the landscapein the picture given by my professor, I sketched out the different items that I saw up close. Still with the burnt senia, I painted where the hills started, the crops began, and the trees blumed. This over all step is very important, because it aligns your painting making it easier to see my painting come alive piece by piece.

The next step in this painting is checking the angles of the crops by the angle of the paintbrush and bringing it up against the canvas to show the exact angle of the crops. Then, I created a grayish-blue background that I neutralized with some white paint to show how far away the mountains are. When I paint big areas, i hold the end of my paint brush away from me. When painting the crops, I had to mix green paint with some dark red to make the front crops darker then the ones further away from me. I took a little bit of burnt senia and used the side of my brush to give lines to show the deatils in the grass around the crops. The clouds I started with the darkest blue and slower mixed it to make it lighter in spots. In the near future I will connect most of the clouds into one dark one.

I started connecting the clouds to make them look more powerful. I used a combination of paint to give them a grayish-blue appearance, but I kept the smaller clouds to make the sky look more realistic. Also, I took my rag and blotted the clouds to show the different textures. Going further with the clouds I used different shades of blue to give them a stormy appearance. Next I did touch ups on the sunset. I had to clean up my messy spots. Also, I had to my clouds more form, I took my brush and wipe the bottom of the clouds upward to show the softness of a cloud. Back to the crops I took some blue and yellow paint to make a light green to help bring out a few of the plants.

Touch-up day, I got to finalize my landscape painting. i started with the clouds again. This time on the other hand, I connected all the clouds to form one really big cloud. Plus, I had to make the clouds look believeable so i mixed orange and blue paint to make three shades of gray paint. I held my paint brush tilted and brushed paint in different directions, because we all know clouds are never perfect in shape or color. When it comes to the grapevines I had to make the front sections darker and taller so the viewers can see how tall the plants are. There had to be a depiction of different colors in the grapevines. The darker ones are up front and they seem to get lighter as you look further inside the painting. I especially like how the sunshine shines on top of the grapevines.









First Oil Painting

Today in class, we started an oil painting. Professor Margie setup a prop for us to paint. We had to paint two limes, two oranges and a lemon, lifesized depending on the size of our canvas. I started using the technique thick over thin. Spreading gesso over the top of my canvas giving me a easy background. Secondly, I used the view finders to figuare out where the objects of my painting will be placed.

While painting the fruit, I also painted the shadows where they appeared. The best way to arrange the objects in the painting is to have some of the fruit and their shadows go off the canvas. This painting started difficult because I had to enlarge each peice of fruit to fill up the canvas.

The shadows were a little easier because I took the edge of the paint brush and glided it up the canvas with the combination of blue and orange paint giving the fruit's shadows a realistic appearance.

I continued painting light to dark and thin to thick. The shadows that bounced off the fruit seemed to be too dark after the first day. I decided to tone down the color by using the lighter blue and some orange. There were differences in between the two oranges, the one in front had to be darker. I used the dark yellow and mixed some orange in it to give the orange a darker shade. The lemon was a little bit more difficult, because the left side had a darker edge that was casted off from the surrounding fruit. I know that purple is opposite of yellow on the color wheel, I took a small amount of purple to cast a little shadow on the left side of the lemon.

When I started giving more tone in the color of the limes, I saw that there was a yellow reflection on one of them. By mixing alittle bit of yellow and green gave the lime a brighter center. The fun began, when I needed to show a shimmer of a highlight on the center orange. Using a little white and orange paint, I slanted my paint brush, and ever so slightly, brushed small strokes. Between each stroke I would wipe my paint brush in case I picked up any paint from underneath the white.

The final stage of this painting is touching up. I first started with the limes. I gave them a rounder shape. The oranges were my main issues because I saw they needed three different shades of orange on them. The left side had to be more firmer looking and darker. The second shade of orange I mixed with a small amount of yellow to give the orange a brighter center. Another touch up that I focused on was the shadows directly underneath the fruit. The painting came to a conclusion when I painted the bottom half of the background. I mix white, yellow, and a tad bit of orange to give the table the fruit was laying on a off white look.