Any oil painters in the house?

[confused]

Just to illustrate this point:

Wow, I've never seen that before. It really does underline it, thanks for posting that.

 

[confused]

You know, I just may do that, I still have a lot of art supplies

My Grandad always said that he found that the hardest part was just getting everything set up again, after that he could get into it. If you've still got most of everything you need, you should definitely give it a try again.

 

[Stinky Kitty]

If you wear out your friends and family you can practice from still life and landscape. You'll build the same kinds of observation skills in translating 3D volumes to 2D representations. It really takes obsessing over like so many other things.

After you've started seeing the changes in your work, you can even try taking a sketchpad somewhere people are, parks, malls, streets, and doing quick gesture drawings. Not really trying to go for rendered accuracy, but to catch the moment, the pose, the inflection, the posture. You can catch full lengths, just head and shoulders, an arm, anything that interests you.

If there is a university, college, or art school of some sort nearby, they usually have a live community life drawing session once a week during the evening. They charge a nominal fee of a few bucks and provide a life model contracted by the school. Typically a graduate student or faculty member monitors. There is no agenda, no lesson, it's not a teaching environment, but another opportunity to draw from life.

You'll not only build better volume observations, but color and lighting as well. Photographs just can't do justice to the subtleties in the shadings and blendings of hue and value that describe surface and texture.

As you explore building your observation and translation, keep in mind the three kinds of creativity: imitative, interpretive and generative. Play around between them all. Building a perfectly rendered imitative is awesome. But just like covering a song, everyone knows the real life original. The interpretive, such as the cool Impressionistic palate knife paintings of Sin Nombre, can be far more interesting, and liberating. Then there is the joy of splashing about generating our own designs.

A jeweler once suggested gathering bottles of various shapes and colors, some metal and wood scraps, smash it to bits, strew and pile it. Then explore it for new designs, gazing in to find new shapes and surfaces. Don't be drawing what's there! Use what you see as inspiration for original drawings. (Remember "drawing" isn't always pencil and paper. It can be chalks nupastels, color washes. I love getting the dimestore watercolors and some fave brushes and a hearty medium tooth paper and heading out for some fun . . .

. . . if it's not fun, it's not rock and roll!

 

[D-POLAND]

I really like that style. I've got a palette knife but I've only used it for mixing so far. I don't think I've quite got the confidence to go for it yet, haha. Thanks for posting more of your work.




Ah, did you paint it expressively?

there was this one time that i dropped a full pail of paint !!yes, it was an expressive moment!!

 

[Stinky Kitty]

My Grandad always said that he found that the hardest part was just getting everything set up again, after that he could get into it. If you've still got most of everything you need, you should definitely give it a try again.

This is one of the advantages of oils, given you have a place. to leave things set up.

 

[confused]

If you wear out your friends and family you can practice from still life and landscape. You'll build the same kinds of observation skills in translating 3D volumes to 2D representations. It really takes obsessing over like so many other things.

After you've started seeing the changes in your work, you can even try taking a sketchpad somewhere people are, parks, malls, streets, and doing quick gesture drawings. Not really trying to go for rendered accuracy, but to catch the moment, the pose, the inflection, the posture. You can catch full lengths, just head and shoulders, an arm, anything that interests you.

If there is a university, college, or art school of some sort nearby, they usually have a live community life drawing session once a week during the evening. They charge a nominal fee of a few bucks and provide a life model contracted by the school. Typically a graduate student or faculty member monitors. There is no agenda, no lesson, it's not a teaching environment, but another opportunity to draw from life.

You'll not only build better volume observations, but color and lighting as well. Photographs just can't do justice to the subtleties in the shadings and blendings of hue and value that describe surface and texture.

As you explore building your observation and translation, keep in mind the three kinds of creativity: imitative, interpretive and generative. Play around between them all. Building a perfectly rendered imitative is awesome. But just like covering a song, everyone knows the real life original. The interpretive, such as the cool Impressionistic palate knife paintings of Sin Nombre, can be far more interesting, and liberating. Then there is the joy of splashing about generating our own designs.

A jeweler once suggested gathering bottles of various shapes and colors, some metal and wood scraps, smash it to bits, strew and pile it. Then explore it for new designs, gazing in to find new shapes and surfaces. Don't be drawing what's there! Use what you see as inspiration for original drawings. (Remember "drawing" isn't always pencil and paper. It can be chalks nupastels, color washes. I love getting the dimestore watercolors and some fave brushes and a hearty medium tooth paper and heading out for some fun . . .

. . . if it's not fun, it's not rock and roll!

Thanks for taking the time to write that for me. There's a lot to think about there.

 

[Stinky Kitty]

Thanks for taking the time to write that for me. There's a lot to think about there.

My pleasure! It's always a joy to think and share

I have some other musings, but it's so late, it's early here. . .

 

[Thermionik]

That is exquisitely observed - too many to mention individually, but the standouts for me are the blue shadows, the greening sea and the haze through which the far trees are seen. Bloody marvelous.....