Rediscovering Oil Paints

I started learning to paint with oil colors years ago, and though I did mainly landscapes and still life paintings back then (it was around 14 years ago), I did love using them.  There were a few years when I stopped painting and mainly focused on creating with glass, but when I started learning about mixed media and painting again, it was with mainly acrylics.

In this workshop I have been taking (Misty Mawn's Face to Face) we have explored many, different art mediums.  I have learned so much and have enjoyed it tremendously!   In week 5, we explored (among other things) oil paints and I had the opportunity to dig out my oil painting gear and paints.  Oh how I loved it too! Some of my paints had dried up in their tubes, but many were still fine to use, especially with the addition of a little linseed oil to what I managed to squeeze out of the tubes.

Here's what I managed to paint from that lesson.  She started out this way with a dark background and painting in the medium and lighter areas from there:

After the next session where I started adding in more flesh tones and her hair color, she looked like this:

And the final is here with the color of her dress and lace detail, her hair toned down, and added shading and more subtle flesh tones on her face and an earring:

I re-discovered that with oils, you have to let them dry some in between layers, in order to get more subtle details.  I thoroughly enjoyed doing this one though.  There were more assignments for this lesson, which I am going back to this week since I hadn't had time to do more that week (due to flu and teeth extractions, etc.  Ugh - a difficult week!). 

What I learned was that I do LOVE working in oils and having the ability to do more subtle blending of details and shading.  It was the first time I had done any portraits in oils, and it is a wonderful medium to use for this!

Thanks for your interest!  This painting will be offered soon in my Etsy shop.  She needed more time for the paint to dry.  As always, I welcome your comments and feedback. 

Arlene

I Am Emerging - No More Resistance

Just a quick post to share a couple of new developments with you.  I have made a new commitment to share more - here on my blog, on my Facebook page , and to actually start to list new paintings in my Artfire and my Etsy shops, which I have been resisting and procrastinating about for quite a while now.

It has been on my mind to start doing this since I came up with my 2013 focus word of "Emerge", which to me means coming out of my little protected world I have been (hiding?) in for several years.  I think I stopped listing new art partly because nothing much was selling, and I couldn't figure out why it wasn't.  To say it was a bit  disappointing is an understatement.  I have doubted myself and my artistic talents for years as a result.  Why is it that we judge ourselves only based on the value that we perceive others have placed on us?

Well, I have made a choice now to just do the work that I have been resisting - list new art and post about what I am doing - regardless of any fears I might have about anyone liking what I do.   I may still feel some reluctance cropping up here and there, but I will persist.

I made a start!  Today I listed a new painting on my Artfire shop.  It is one I created while I was teaching at Michaels last year. It is this one:

Why this one?  I think because it makes me think of Spring, which I really needed today after we had almost a foot of snow dump on us!  It is done with acrylic paint on a canvas board.  Here it is in my shop:  Tulips

Another wonderful thing happened that I wanted to share with you.  I am featured today in I'm A Late Bloomer , which is a wonderful website featuring artists who have started later in life, like me.  I am so pleased and honored to be there.  Please take a look if you want, and let me know what you think. 

I do have more art to share with you but I will save it for another post.  

Thanks so much for stopping by and taking the time to read my posts. I love reading your comments - really appreciate every one of them.

Arlene

Having Fun With Faces

I am still working on new faces, and new techniques for them while participating in the Face to Face workshop.  What a fabulous experience this has been!  I'll first just catch you up on what I've created.

The above was a charcoal sketch which I then added gesso to in order to blend the marks.  It was an interesting technique.

This was done first as a background (one of several I created ahead of time) on which I layered extra heavy gel medium (in the tutorial, Misty used modeling paste but I didn't have any in my studio at the time), and before it dried, I scratched the background texture and the face into it with a wooden chopstick.  Then when it was dry I painted black India ink over the entire surface and rubbed most of it away except for what was in the grooves and some of the shaded areas. Interesting to do!

This painting was started by using a reference photo and just painting (in acrylics) the shadow areas first without doing a pencil sketch first.  I wanted to try my hand at doing a male face again. I like how this turned out!

When I created the background above with the gel medium, I also had created some other backgrounds with gel medium.  This was one of them that also had some papers collaged to it and then gesso over it before I added some paint to it.  I painted this face on top of that (after it had dried thoroughly). This was also acrylic paint.

This one was really fun - I sketched the basic face with a Stabilo Marks All pencil and then used some of the Neocolor II water soluble oil pastels, using bright colors and not really caring about whether or not the colors were "realistic".  Hence the blue hair and yellow and reddish skin tones. Then I blended with a wet brush and also used some white acrylic paint, which served to tone things down a bit here and there and also blended colors.  I was attempting to be more abstract, but it turned out to be only the colors were more abstract or stylized.

As you can see I have been busy painting and not taking much time to blog.  I have a few more faces done, but I will save those for another day and count them up to see how I'm doing on the 29 Faces 2013 challenge. I think I am a few behind on that.  

As if I didn't have enough challenges, I also declared myself a participant in a "Painting a Day for 10 Days" challenge given by Gritty Jane (Jane Spakowsky) on her Facebook profile.  Well, I might as well, right?  I am painting a lot more now so it made sense.

I'm so glad to be back creating in my studio after a week's slow-down due to fighting a head cold virus.  I'm still sniffling and sneezing, but my head is clear enough to be creating too. Thank heavens!

Thanks for reading. Next post up will be more about the painting a day challenge and beginning to paint in oils again!

Creatively yours, 

Arlene

  

Collage and Faces 4 Through 7

I've gotten behind in posting - there is so much going on in the workshop I'm taking of Misty Mawn's that I am barely keeping up there.  Well, not totally keeping up because I haven't taken the time to do ALL the assignments for each weekly lesson. I AM having a lot of fun and learning a lot though, and even getting to use up some of the art supplies I have had stored away but not used much before.  How great is that?!

So, I'll share all the art I've created since the last post here.  We did a whole week on various forms of collage.  This has not been one of my strong points, though I really enjoy looking and admiring others' wonderful collage efforts. These next two images were done by pasting a piece of a face from a magazine page on my paper and then finishing the face around it.  Kind of a fun and novel idea.

These were drawn in charcoal around the piece of the face that I glued down.   The next one was drawn with oil pastels over a page that was collaged with bits of text pages, music pages and other ephemera. 

I've had several sets of oil pastels that I really haven't done much with. I really had fun doing this face with them.  Enough so that I will use them again!  The next one was a collage background but I used some soft pastels to draw the face on it.

This last one was really fun.  the butterfly and flower in her hair were cut out and collaged also, as was her collar.  In fact, the collar was from some hand painted paper I made using a stencil from Artistcellar - I love their stencils and all their supplies!  

The next week we started using paints and mediums, and I'll make that a separate post.  We started out doing some backgrounds and then I went on to use two of these for other portraits.  Look for my next post!

Thanks for reading - comments and questions are always welcome!

Sgraffito and Face Number 3

Another face finished yesterday - this time I used a new technique again.  It's called "sgraffito" which entails scratching through a layer of material to reveal layers underneath.  In this case, I used some good watercolor paper, painted several layers of black waterproof India ink on it, and then when that was dry, covered it with some white oil pastel.  Then I scratched with various sharp tools to reveal more or less of the black underneath it to draw the face.

I used the image of one of Paul Gauguin's self portraits, as a reference photo because I thought it would lend itself well to this technique, and because it was an interesting face!  Plus, I haven't really done very many male faces yet and thought it was about time I tried one.  Anyway, here it is:

I like how it turned out, but it kind of looks like I used just graphite pencil, though I didn't!  If I use this method again, I think I'd like to use different colors for the layers, so it looks different.  

I am enjoying so much trying out new drawing techniques and materials.  Loving the challenge.  There are more "assignments" from last week, but already I am behind on this week's ones!  I may start the new lesson and hopefully be able to go back to some of the other assignments from this week.

This also is my face # 3 for the 29 Faces challenge.  I didn't get to spend much time in my studio today, so tonight I think I will just do some sketches in one of my sketchbooks to try and catch up a little. Hopefully I'll have another few faces to share tomorrow!