Breakthrough!

I painted at Kat's studio tonight. She had a first Friday of the month open studio night. As I have complained before when I paint around people, I usually can't concentrate. This time, I showed up with two paintings that I had drawn out, which I had also barely begun. Tonight at the open studio, I finished both of them. Being around people plus interacting with them plus successfully painting equals breakthrough!

This is the second of the two paintings.

#195 - Goldfinch - 5" x 7" - paper - standard palette

The first one is from a gorgeous picture of Chandler. This is take 3. The first two attempts will not see the light of day. This one is for Art 4 Shelter because I've done a portrait of Chandler for each of the last three Art 4 Shelter events.

#194 - Chandler - 5" x 7" - paper - standard palette

It's fun to compare this to my Chandler painting for the 2017 event. This is one of my favorite paintings. I have it as wallpaper on my phone.

This is my Chandler painting for the 2016 event. I started my first set of painting lessons in March 2016 and I painted this in May 2016. 

This is a really fun way to look back and see how my painting has evolved and changed. 

Sadie

This gets you to my first attempt.  This gets you to attempt #2 through #7.  It's still not quite there, but attempt #8 is getting much closer.

#171 - Sadie - 8" x 10" - paper - std palette

Six Months Of A Twelve Month Series

I worked at the Minnesota State Fair Foundation, so it was time to tackle a drawing of the historic bust on the front porch of the building. Each month, I spend 10 to 20 minutes on a quick sketch. This time I used a very different tool. Last week, I purchased a Pental Pocket Brush Pen, so I decided to use it for today's sketch. Even though it's new to me, I love it. The ink flows out of the pen so freely. I can see why Roz Stendahl gushes about this pen.

I am 6 months into this and my sketches have only the tiniest resemblance to the actual subject. That's okay. On a micro level, I don't warm up and it's the end of the work day. Sometimes, this is the only time that I try to tackle facial features in the month. On a macro level, it is still miraculous to me to be developing the skills to draw something like this. While there's still a lot to learn, it wasn't that long ago that I was petrified to put a line on a piece of paper. 

Month 6

My plan is to post my sketches on a quarterly basis, so here is the one from the beginning of September. I was a little uptight with this one and did some erasing, which leads to more erasing. Generally, I try to avoid that. It makes me start to doubt any line that I've put on a page.

Month 5

This one is from the beginning of August.

Month 4

Oh heck, I might as well post the first three sketches as well.

Month 3

Month 2

This is the one that started it all. I did this sketch while I was taking the on-line drawing class. The subject matter was so far out of my league, but I was really pleased with myself for giving it a try at the time. From there, I thought the once a month sketch would be an interesting way to see what changes in my sketches. I may just keep doing this for as long as I do work at this client.

Month 1

Another Revisit

Yesterday, I painted the background. Today, I meant to paint the shapes, colors, and values of the bird. Instead, I painted the bird.

Here is the same scene from when I painted it in April 2017. 

Month Four

Yesterday, I worked at the Minnesota State Fair Foundation, so here is month 4 of a 12 month series. Each month, I've been waiting until I'm leaving work for the day and I spend about 15 minutes or so doing a quick sketch.

This was a loose sketch and it was enjoyable to do.

Facial features are still a challenge. Today, I picked up the book, Five Minute Sketching People, from the library and read a little bit of it at lunchtime. It had good tips regarding general guidelines of how certain facial features compare to other facial features. For example if you look at a person straight on, most people are about 5 eyes wide in the plane that includes the persons's eyes. When I sketch, I try to sketch what I see, but I think some general "rules" like this might help, since experience has shown that I actually don't always see so well with my eyes.

Another general guideline is that eyes typically are at the half-way point in the height of a person's face. That's not how my drawing turned out. I'll double check this the next time I see the actual historic bust.

I'm sure these guidelines are out there in the world everywhere, but there's so much to learn and to know that it's the first time I've come across some of them. Again, my goal is to try and sketch what I see, but it's good to have some back-up knowledge to cross-check things.

Finally, I love that I can check out so many sketching books at the library. It helps me make better choices  about which ones I would like to own.

Three Months Of A Twelve Month Series

At the Minnesota State Fair grounds, there is a historic bust on the porch of one of the buildings. Since I am on the fair grounds for work, I decided back in May to draw this historic bust every month for one year, using whatever medium I want. Each time I do this, it's literally a snapshot of where I'm at and what I can do at this point in the journey. Sometimes if I feel stuck or on a plateau, this type of post helps remind me why it's important to keep working and practicing.

The first time that I tried was back in May at the start of the one-month online drawing class that I took from Roz Stendahl.

The second time was at the beginning of June. This took around 15 minutes.   

Today, I warmed up with several gesture sketches and did this sketch in about 15 minutes. It was really warm on the porch. I guess I didn't consider that when I made the 12 month goal. While I still have a lot of room for improvement in capturing the actual object that I'm drawing, I like how much looser this one is than the one from one month ago. There's something a little cheeky about it and there's better depth and shape to the face.

I Missed One

This was my first try in June 2016.

Finally!

Here is Sadie.

I first tried to paint her in August 2016.  At this point, I had been painting for about 6 months. 

Since that time, I tried again, 

and again, 

and again, 

I cropped the picture differently and tried again.

I tried one more time last night. Painting the same picture helps me see how I'm doing. All of the drawing that I've been doing has helped me. There is still so much room for improvement, but I feel like my skills have taken a step forward. The things I like best are the eyes, the muzzle, and the color.  For some reason, I've tended to make my oranges and browns muddy and that's how this painting started, but I went back and changed it. My darkest values may be a little extreme, but that works better than now having enough range in the values. 

Cabin Sunset

Yesterday morning, I finished a painting a sunset from this summer's cabin weekend. When I looked at source picture, I felt like I was seeing more, so I wanted to take another try at it. Plus, I haven't painted a landscape for awhile.

The number one thing I would like to figure out for the next time is how to do better paint strokes for the water. 

Here's my last attempt at painting this same scene back in September. 

Surly - Take 2

I intended to leave more black gesso in this second attempt. Still, the face shape is much better than the first try.

Here is the picture, although it is not cropped to the same dimensions.

Attempt 1:

 Attempt 2:

In Carol Marine's book, Daily Painting, she talks about the need to put in your time learning how to paint. She talks about either 10,000 hours or 500 paintings. One of the advantages to painting small is that it should take significant less than 10,000 hours to do 500 paintings. While I haven't counted sequentially, my guess is I'm around 250 or so. While I can still see a lot of room for improvement, I feel good about the progress that I've made and am currently making.

Second Attempt

My second try turned out better. While I'm not fond of my paint strokes or some of the choices that I made, I am much happier with the shape of the dog's face. I will revisit this one some time in the future.

For comparison, here is the first attempt from several days ago.

Sadie - Take 3

I'm stuck in my brain about how to mix Wingnut's lighter colors, so I diverted to painting Sadie for the third time today.  In many cases, three is the magic number.  For this one, my guess is that four might be the magic number.  Still, I feel good about the improvement each time.

I did the sketch at work at lunch today.  It was on a 5 inch square surface.  It made the drawing harder, since I'm using a version of the above picture that is 8 inches square.

Here is the finished painting (a/k/a my third attempt).  The nose is getting better!  I'm also pleased with the lighter background.  I don't know why, but for a long time it was really, really hard to paint lighter backgrounds. Sadie is still a little too dark. Also, her eye color is hard. They should stand out more. There are so many orange and brown colors, I'm not sure how to do it.

This was my second attempt, painted in mid-August:

This was my first attempt, painted in mid-June:

Fourth Painting Class and Lot and Lots of Cats

At our forth painting class, we brought pictures and painted from those.  I brought several and decided to try and paint one of my cats, Ella.  In retrospect, it seems silly, but I was terrified to try and paint a cat even though this is one of the creatures that I desperately want to learn how to capture!

Class was on 04/07/16.  Here's the finished result.  At the time, I was pleased with this and I will probably keep this one.  It is definitely a cat.  There is no way on 01/01/16 that I could have even tried to do this.

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Here she is in the next day's painting.

I switched over to a picture of Dorian.  Here is my first attempt on 04/10/16.  Poor thing.  She looks almost canine. 

I tried again a few days later after another painting class.  Kat helped me to better "see" how to capture a cat's nose and muzzle.

Here's the version that started the blog, which was painted on 04/25/16.

Here's yesterday's version.  I like the eyes a lot in this one.

As cringe-worthy as it can be to post some of my first attempts, it is enjoyable to watch things take shape!

Seven Apple Paintings

After the first week of class, I went out and bought some produce, including an apple, an orange, a lemon, and a lime, so that I would have things to paint.  I painted the same apple 7 times before it all finally clicked.  

The first 3 times were before the second night of class.  These paintings are amusing.  The beginning ones look like an adolescent boy with really, really bad posture, who has been transformed into an apple.  He is having a bad day and is all slumped in on himself.  On a positive note, I finally was leaving some black gesso background showing through.  Prior to this, I was covering every bit of space with paint.  

At the second night of painting class, we did an exercise where you used one color per brush stroke. You don't have to change the color significantly.  This makes you think more about your brush strokes and also helps with mixing colors.  Yes, I did bring my apple to class.  Here is apple painting #4.

For homework after this class, I painted the same apple for the fifth and sixth time.  Both of these look more apple-like.

The seventh time was the charm.  I painted this on 03/20/16.  Fortunately, I painted it on hard board, rather than paper.  It's hanging in my kitchen and it makes me smile.  When I look at it, it reminds me of this first time that I was able to make the connection between seeing something and representing it in paint.