7 posts tagged “painting”
Speed - This is a birthday gift for a friend who rides a red Ducati 999 superbike. 20"x20" square. His helmet is white. Jacket is black. get it?
Apprehension|Dread - 24"x30". Commissioned by Stepto.
The pictures I took of Dawn didn't turn out very well, but here is a low quality iPhone picture of a painting I completed on July 7. This canvas started its journey in January. I haven't settled on a name for this yet, I'm considering a couple options. This painting is also 24"x30" and will be available for purchase once it dries. It was 'painted' with palette knives instead of brushes, so the paint is very textural (which doesn't really come through in an iPhone photo).
I also finished another painting that I'll post photos of next week. And I've discovered that for the type of painting I'm doing, I can buy brushes at Home Depot instead of art supply stores for less $ and the same results. Which is good because I plan on doing a lot of painting this month and I hate washing brushes. The little brushes are easy, but I'm mostly working with 2" to 4" wide brushes and it takes forever to clean oil paint out of 8 of those. eeesh. I am a little lazier when it comes to soapy-soapy time with a $6 brush than I am with a $30 brush. It's not like I'm making any money at this so far.
Dreaming - 24"x30", hangs in my bedroom. not for sale. This was Painting Experiment v2.0.
Hope - 24"x30", hangs in my bedroom. not for sale. This is my fourth painting.
Hell - 24" square, hangs in my dining room but available for sale if someone really loves it enough to want to buy it. This is #3.
I'll take pictures of Apprehension (24"x30", commissioned) and one I'm provisionally calling Dawn (16"x20") once they are dry, I just painted them last night. It was my first time painting since getting frustrated on January 9th by a painting that I hated. Guess what that one will be called when I finally finish it?
This is the third painting I completed. I had leftover red paint mixed up from another canvas I was working on, and it seemed a shame for it to go to waste. So I put it to use.
Turns out it looks great in my dining room, on my apple green wall with the potted sticks. (when the orchids are in bloom, they're beautiful, I swear).
Sorry the iPhone picture isn't super high quality... In fact it is a pretty crappy picture, the painting is prettier than this looks. The wall is prettier than this looks too. Eventually I'll get some good pictures of my art. No guarantee I will share them still, but I would like to have some for myself if nothing else.
As a result of friends giving me a bunch of fantastic oil painting supplies for Christmas and a buy-one-get-one-for-a-penny canvas sale at Aaron Brothers, I was all ready this weekend to try painting again with higher quality paints and brushes. Tonight was far less of an experimental 'let's see how the paint spreads on canvas and what the colors look like' experience, though there is still a TON for me to learn still (like buy protective gloves to wear when washing brushes with turpentine). With no actual training or research, I'm figuring most of it out by trial. Don't like how a brush applied the paint? Scrape it off and try again with a different shaped brush. Or just grab the other brush and change it. I'm still doing incredibly abstract painting, so smooshing up something and blending it in doesn't really matter so much, its not like it has to look like anything particular when it is done.
So I spent a few hours tonight painting, and it was very different from the last time. Tonight's painting was cathartic. I don't know if it was therapeutic in a now-I-feel-better sense, but I do think it was a good way for me to creatively express how I feel right now. Even though I wasn't listening to the Hercules playlist I was still singing along with my Zune at top volume (my neighbors must hate me) and this time I had a clear idea of what I wanted to convey in my painting and what colors I wanted to use, without knowing quite what it was going to end up looking like. I just started applying color, then mixing colors, then adding depth or highlights here and there. At one point I tried doing something, didn't like it, scraped off most of the paint I had just applied with a palette knife and changed what remained with a fan brush. I only used the fan brush for six strokes all night, but I think they were the most important ones. When I stepped back to look and decide what to do next, I instantly knew it was finished. I didn't plan or envision the end result when I started, but clearly this was the place I was meant to go.
This one I'm actually proud of. When I look at it, I think it feels the way I felt when I painted it, if that makes sense. It doesn't feel forced or over thought. The last minute change with the fan brush made the painting _so_ much better. In a way part of my satisfaction with the painting is that the end result is a surprise to me, like opening a random oyster and finding a pearl. I had no idea what it would look like, I didn't TRY to paint this, but I did. It just feels very organic and natural.
After coming upstairs to wash my brushes (I paint in my garage) I went back downstairs to just look at it and try to take it all in. Twice. Like if I looked at it long and hard enough, I could absorb it permanently into my head and heart. Then after doing a little reading online about oil painting I decided to bring it into the house to dry versus being in the cold and dark garage. I am planning to hang it in my bedroom once it is dry, and I'll be heart broken if it doesn't cure well.
I would let people see this painting but it still feels too personal to try taking a picture with the D70 to put on the blog. Sorry.
The other day I tried painting for the first time. I haven't shown my "art" to anyone, but my kids have seen it in the garage. Now Allyson begs me every day to paint a picture like it for her.
I still might paint over it. We'll see. At least someone likes it.
hm. ok, that sounds like I'm asserting that no one likes it, and obviously that isn't true. For starters, no one has seen it to form an opinion on it. And I like it, I just know it isn't very good. I like it for the experience more than for the result. Sort of like taking a cruise - you're on it for the journey, not the destination.
- decided where to hang my large framed catwoman poster
- cut the mat and framed my augographed Thomas Dolby poster
- knuckled down and did the math to ensure the five Blue Sun travel posters were
- centered on the wall
- evenly spaced
