Landscape

This piece is the first landscape that I've ever tried to paint. They're olive trees which I painted for my friend's mom to hang up in their house. 

This is painted with acrylics on canvas, and its 12 x 24. I really like the way that the light is coming in and how the leaves turned out, and even though you can't in the picture there is a lot of texture on the canvas. It took more than a couple layers of paint to get it that way though, and a few weeks to complete this piece. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out though, and I really hope that the family I'm giving it to likes it! 

I often start pieces off in sections, and then go over them in layers. I noticed while painting this piece, I tend to forget that I'm going to be putting a couple layers of everything down anyway and I spend a lot of time in even the preliminary stages when all I really need to do is throw some greenish color down and get a feel for where everything is going to be on the canvas. I get too focused on the details. 

I tried using a fan brush to paint the grass, but it just didn't come out looking very realistic. So I switched to using just a very small brush and painting on each leaf. It took a lot longer, but when you compare the pictures it looks a lot better. 

Alone at Last

My friend Ryan named this picture, jokingly because it looks like they're in bed. But I think the name is sort of fitting if you interpret it as one person alone with their thoughts before they go to bed. When I'm asleep my thoughts flip between day-dreamy and happy and sad. I think this picture captures that. 

Our art teacher has this really cool video camera hooked up to the projector on the white board. We can put up giant paper and project bigger versions of pictures and we even had each other model and draw real time on the board. It's really difficult to model when you're laughing and joking around so much, and I wasn't trying to be too accurate, so the faces turned out really weird. We decided to layer two people on there. I ended up with this: 

I set a goal for myself that I was going to try and salvage this crazy sketch and make it into something worth taking a second glance at. I'm not even sure if I quite accomplished that, although I think I definitely improved the piece. I will post pictures showing the progression, however I really only spent about an hour painting this.  

Tyger Tyger Burning Bright

I don't really know what compelled me to draw a tiger, but this one has an intensity that I love. It's eyes are pretty much staring into your soul. This project was mainly just a chance to practice with a new medium. I think I am going to try a similar picture of a dog or something to continue with this technique. 

For this project I used Prisma colored pencils to begin with. I drew the entire picture in a couple hours Sunday afternoon. I didn't really intend to do that, but I sort of go on art binges and no matter what homework is due the next day, I just can't stop!

This is the most dramatic change though, and what I wanted to experiment on in the first place. My art teacher  brought out turpenoid (which can be used as an odorless, colorless substitute of turpentine) to try and spread on top of a friend's colored pencil drawing to help smooth out the color. Not only did it do that, but it added a very interesting shine and really made the colors vibrant. It was so awesome I just had to try it too, so I quickly spent my weekend creating something to practice on. 

As you can see, comparing these two pictures, the turpenoid drastically changes the picture. 

Anyway, I just spread the turpenoid over top of the colored pencils with a cotton swab. It spreads really easily, so be careful not to blend too much, and switch out your cotton swabs so you don't mix the colors in unwanted areas. 

I also like how after the turpenoid it almost looks a bit more fluffy and furry. Hence why I want to try another animal face to practice this technique more. 

To finish off the picture I added a bit of white reflecting in its eyes, and whiskers with white acrylic paint.