Painting Class: Painting Still

Well, I'm sort of amazed how fast the last few months have gone by, and how little artwork I seem to have done in that time.  I was worried at one point that I was slipping back into the mode I entered that eventually led to the creation of this Blog - that of not being fussed to do any art, a state that lasted close to 10 years.

Thankfully though I am doing art - less than I probably should, but vastly more than I was during those 10 years.  The stresses of the last couple of months are wearing off too, so more is likely to be forthcoming.  After this post I have one more planned before the end of the month (possibly 2, but the other will be quite personal and have no art in it, so you likely don't care).  Which brings me back to this post, and why I'm commenting on how time has flown:  It's an art class post.

The last post I wrote on the subject was after my last class waaay back in August.  It doesn't seem that long ago, yet it was almost 3 months.  I started another class about 10 weeks ago and just finished it.  I didn't attend all 10 sessions (I think I missed 3), but I painted a reasonable amount in those sessions I did attend, and at home when I missed one of those 3.  As a result I have 5 new paintings of vastly differing quality. They are all on canvas board, painted in Acrylic, but the sizes vary.  Incidentally, all the photographs but one are from angles other than that at which I was painting as I took them as an after thought rather than during the process.

So this is the one I'm least happy with.  I'm not the worlds fastest painter, so I decided to leave out some of the objects you'll see in the photo for time reasons.  Even so, it took me two sessions (not counting setup and break down, that's about two hours a time), and looks really sloppy to me.  Here's the photo of the scene it's based on, from close to the same angle from which it was painted (I think I was looking down on it more).

So you can see I got the proportions way off the mark, and everything's a bit too bright in the painting. For all that though it's not a complete failure - One thing I didn't mention before is that all of these look better in real life than the photographs really convey, I'm just not very good at photographing them as yet.  So I'm quite pleased with the orange ball (actually an egg end on).  I'd painted the A being far to orange, which made it difficult to get the egg as bright as I would have liked, so I dulled it down at the last minute, to a poor result, but it does mean the egg stands out quite nicely, whereas it would have been lost before.  The cloth isn't bad either, especially compared to some of the later ones.

This second piece took three weeks, and is probably the best of those I did, even though I don't like it all that much.  All the pieces this time around were still life, which is fine, but it would have been nice to mix it up a bit (mind you, nothing was stopping me from doing just that if I'd wanted to work on something else instead, so it's entirely my own fault).  The image of the painting itself is a little washed out, the real colours are a little better.  Here's the photo of the scene.

So I'm not happy with most of the shapes.  The paint brushes are wobbly, the gear is squiff, the flower too blocky on the lower left and so on.  I quite like the can though, which is why I chose this particular scene (we had a choice of two).  At one point the flower pot was a much ruddier brown.  Paula (who runs the class) talked me into trying to make it closer to the actual, brighter, colour and I'm glad she did.  Here's a shot taken after the first session, where you can see the layout pencils and the less saturated brown of the flowerpot.

My mother wants to have this one, I really don't know why.

This one was painted the evening before halloween, hence the blood that was not in the original.  Actually, the photo below is probably the closest to the angle I saw the actual mask from, so you can see I made a bit of a mess of the perspective.  You can see that I've left out the things from the table itself - choosing to focus on the mask.

A better thing to do would be to have made the entire background blue, but I thought it would be a challenge to capture the silvered material.  Did an okay job I guess, and the whole thing took only 2 hours.  It's the one I like the most of the 5, even though it's not very accurate (working from life is a lot harder than working from photos, and I have a hard enough time doing that).

This and the next are quick value studies, and for this one I didn't lay out using pencils to begin with but went straight for the paint (similar to the way I do most of my speedpaints, but with, y'know, paint?).  The downside of this is that the composition is pretty weak, with far too much black space.  I also left out a small tower from on top of the cylindrical box.  Sadly this is the only one for which I don't have a photo of the original scene.  Despite the flaws, I quite like it - I think the pig turned out pretty well. as did the shadows.  The whole thing took only 40 minutes, aided by my not needing to worry about colour I suspect.

And here's the last one.  Another value study, but I wanted to have the tangerine be orange.  I did lay this out in pencil first, but mostly just with simple block forms so I could get on with the painting.  This backfired a little as the weights came out a little weak looking.

The proportions on the A are better than they were in the first picture, but it's still a little stubby.  This was mostly straight lines and circles, which are tricky to do with paint it seems (unlike digital stuff I can't just hold control and click the endpoint for a straight line).  I may need to make myself one of those painters straight-edges out of a bit of dowel and a sponge to help with the problem, although I was moving quick on this one and probably wouldn't have wanted to slow down anyway if I'd had one.  It took about 70 minutes I think.


And that's it for this post.  Hopefully I'll get another post up this week (month), and I'll certainly get one done for next.  You know, looking at those photos again, I wouldn't mind basing some digital work on a couple of them, they might turn out quite well.  Or I could try them again with real paint later, a reasonable gauge of progress perhaps.

Painting Class: A Head of a Time

And another post, coming in just under the wire for the month. And this may not be the last (don't hold your breath though). I have to be honest, this month has seen my art more or less go hang. I'm working on things at work, that while fun also leave me feeling drained of mojo at the end of the day (so there is lots of art, just not the sort of stuff I can share on here). Add to that a little mini-crunch this week and a bad, if short lived, head cold and I have very little sketching done, and very small number of speedpaints. I did finish another painting class at the start of the month though, and that's what I'm posting today (yeah, the title's a bit of a giveaway). If you want to see the previous painting posts then hit the tag at the bottom there and you'll be set.

Right, off we go.

So first up we did two tonal studies, based on white mannequin busts. I had to miss a chunk of the first class due to other commitments, so the first one was done from a photograph on my phone at home. It's actually not utterly terrible if you squint a bit I guess, but it's far too dark, and my orange bounce lights came out green (looking at the photo it's not actually all that close to it either - maybe this is the wrong photo).

I think it took about 80 minutes all told. Not going to sell, or hang in a gallery, but it was a useful learning experience. (all of these are in Acrylic on 8x10 canvas board by the way).

This is the second tonal study. Same head bust as the previous one, but this time in person and from a different angle. The black shape is the silhouette of my easel as I thought it would make for an interesting composition (it was in the way you see?). I was wrong, but it didn't hurt to try it. This time the values are far closer to the actual thing (I forgot to grab a photo this time though). 90 minutes this time.

For the third session Paula's daughter came in and posed for us (Paula McCarty teaches the class incidentally, I've mentioned that in previous posts). I'm not going to post a photo here, so you'll just have to take my word on this being an excellent likeness, if it was actually a painting of Paula's daughter from an alternate dimension where everyone is much uglier than they are in ours. Basically I think I didn't add enough shadow around the eye (although this picture of it does make it look lighter than it is in reality), and I made her nose far too big. You can tell who it's supposed to be (if you know her) but it is neither a good or flattering portrait. I think it took around 85 minutes.

This one took longer than any of the others. Again I couldn't attend the session this week and ended up painting this self portrait at home. I spent about an extra hour on it over the other ones. It's the only painting I thought to take a work in progress shot of, though it's not terribly exciting.

It's not the most accurate portrait; my nose is too long, giving me a bit of a horse face, but it is recognisable, which is a good thing. I discovered that eyes are a lot harder to do with real paint though, and here they look a little flat (though not as bad as in the next portrait).

And this was the one from the final week. This time the mirror was below me, and the lighting much brighter. The initial sketch was much closer to my proportions, but I think I made a bit of a mess of the actual painting. Not the worse thing in the world, and definitely a step forward, especially given that I think this was the shortest of the paintings (about 75 minutes I think). In person the painting is again a little darker, and the blending on the side of my face seems a lit smoother. Strange how hard it is to get decent shots of these - I'll have to look into how to set up better ones if I do more of these (they scan a lot worse than they photograph).

And I think that's it. The class ended a few weeks ago, and I have yet to pick up a brush again (for the reasons mentioned above). Paula has another class coming up in a few weeks, but I only just read the email (gmail had it marked as spam), so it may be too late for me to attend. Must reply to that tomorrow and see if there are any slots left. Anyway, until the next time faithful followers...

A Collection of Pleasingly Structured Lies (№ 1)

I have depressingly little to report. I have started several pieces, but most of them are some way off from being something I can show. I scanned two months worth of sketches, but have yet to arrange them into something I can display (and if you're a regular reader you'll know that's a pretty major undertaking, which is why I decided to do it less often, but now I realise that just means I have more to do when I get around to it). I haven't done any new speed paints (though I'm hoping to do one today), but I have done some speed sculpts. Digital sculpts you understand, if it was real sculpting materials I would just be showing off a blob of Playdough.
I also started a new painting class with Paula McCarty, so there may be something to show there in a few weeks. Other than that? Not much. Nothing to show anyway. But I don't want to leave you hanging, so since I can post pretty much whatever I want on here you're going to get a little fiction.

I don't write. I am not a writer. I am a story teller though, as I suppose many people with kids are. At bedtime my son insists I tell him a "Story from your mind," whereby he picks two random things (invariably robots and something, or, when that is banned for being overused, a cat and a refrigerator), and I have to tell a story about them. I have yet to write any of these down, although some of them may be worthy of me doing so.
I had to write this down though it wasn't a story for my son, it was a story for me. I had an incomplete dream (I rarely remember dreams), and decided I had to know how it would have ended, so I wrote it down and completed it. I'll leave you to it, and hope you enjoy it, as my tale telling is rarely something I draw attention to.

Until the next time - fiction!

Quite Another Dimension

Two men sat in the sunlit room, one either side of the table. Both men were highly regarded doctors in their respective, but unconnected fields.

"So," said one, "You claim you have succeeded in your attempts at trans-dimensional travel?"

"Claim?" came the others response, "Yes, I suppose 'claim' is fair, as I have no physical evidence that my experiments were successful."

He elaborated, "It is not my physical being that travels you see? Such a thing would be a physical impossibility, and in some dimensions a liability. No, it is not my person that travels, rather my consciousness is transferred into my closest biological equivalent in whichever dimension I arrive in."

The other doctor looked interested, "Closest biological equivalent implies you do not always transfer into your physical duplicate. Have you transferred into others?"

"Quite so. There are an infinite number of dimensions you see? Thus an infinite variety of alternates, only a small number of whom are my biological duplicate. There are a few billion versions of me out there, a few trillion at most. In the vast majority of accessible dimensions the closest thing I can transfer into is very little like myself. I have been a potential sibling a few times, some of them women; I transferred into my father's duplicate twice, once my great-great grandfather, and on one memorable occasion a snake."

"A snake?" the other cried in disbelief, "but how could you possibly operate the controls to return?"

"Well, I didn't need to. The machine works on a timed mechanism. As I said my physical being does not travel, and this goes for any other physical object as well, so taking controls to bring myself back would be quite impossible, and, as you have now realized, quite inconvenient.

I said earlier that this lack of physical transfer avoided some liabilities, one of them being that I may appear in a dimension where the natives breathe a mix of nitrogen and methane. Quite inconvenient to arrive as an oxygen breather in such an environment. But the problem is avoided, as is the problem of operating controls. the machine brings me back after a preset time, with my physical form being seated in a chair within the machine while I am gone."

"In the machine... unconscious?" The other doctor seemed to find this possibility even less believable than the snake, the incredulity evident in his tone.

"From your tone you will be happy to know that I am not unconscious during my travels, no. My physical form must have quite an interesting adventure of its own I gather, as the consciousness of whoever I posses in the other dimension must go somewhere, and so it temporarily occupies my form here. I discovered this the hard way when I returned to find some considerable damage in the lab. I couldn't afford to risk the machine becoming inoperable while I was out of my body, so I installed timed restraints. They lock when I leave, and release when I return. Quite simple really."

The other seemed impressed by this solution to the travelers problem, and made a note on the pad before him, one of many he had written in the last few minutes. He looked up again.

"Tell me Doctor, have you done this often? Does it hurt? And when will you do it again, I would be most interested in observing."

"Why yes, I have done it several times, although after the partial destruction of my lab I have done it less often, and to a more strict schedule. I had to change locations after that as well; the others in my building were quite disturbed by the violence of my dimensional alternate on that occasion, as well you might gather.

It is interesting you ask about pain. early on in the experiments I had very little, just a slight discomfort, but recently I have returned with a level of quite extraordinary pain. I had not thought to wonder why this would be until now, but it did seem to start when I moved labs.

As to when I am trying this again, I believe I have scheduled time in the machine tomorrow morning at about ten o'clock, if you would be free to attend then?"

The other stopped his now relentless scribbling and looked up once more.

"Ten AM? Yes, that sounds perfect. If you'll excuse me though I have other matters to attend to now, and I'm sure you could do with some rest before tomorrow."

He reached over to the intercom on his desk and pressed the switch,

"Orderly, would you escort Doctor Frederick back to his room please?"

After they had left he turned to a third figure, shrouded in shadows and obscured by sunlit dust motes in the corner of the room.

"I believe I'll see him in the morning for his scheduled cranial electro-therapy at ten. I'm afraid he's still quite delusional, although seemingly quite harmless. I doubt we'll have a repeat of his performance at the Davidson Institute here. Are you agreeable to the continuation of his treatment?"

"Yes," said the woman, the Traveller's wife, "He clearly needs all the help we can give him."

Painting Class: Landscape

I finally finished the second painting I had begun during my painting class (which you can catch up on here if you've failed to read it thus far). It took longer than planned. This was because of the previously mentioned Doctor Who piece I was working on turning out to be rather more complicated than expected. That's finished too, and I'll be posting about it early in the new year.

Once that was done there was this little festive thing that came up called Christmas (you may have experienced this particular time-sink, fun though it is) as well as some curfuffle at work. That particular thing has yet to be resolved, but looks hopeful and should be sorted out by my birthday one way or another. If you have no idea where I work or what the issue is then I won't bore you with it, and if you do know then why would I tell you again?

Anyway, I finished the painting. I expect you'd like to see it?

To be fair, it does look moderately better in the flesh (as little as that says), but I've still yet to work out how to light pieces for good photography and I need a tripod.  I have got a swanky new camera though, so that's something.  It's based on this photograph by Chamberstock 

My wife wants to hang it somewhere.  I suggested face to the wall in the lavatory, but she's picked out pride of place in the living room instead.  I really am honestly baffled why people like my stuff most of the time, but I'm thankful for it too despite feeling awkward about the compliments; one day maybe it'll make me money when I'm too old to work on videogames because the technology confuses me, as DVR's do my grandparents.

Before I go on I need to say some things about the class, which I didn't last time as I was too busy wittering on about my cats (incidentally, Christmas Trees and cats - oh what a wonderful combination that isn't).

There were 11 of us in the class of wildly varying ages (I was not the youngest, nor the oldest, but toward the younger end of the spectrum) and predominantly X chromosomes (there were two guys in the group, one of whom was yours truly).  The styles were wildly varying, but I wouldn't say that anyone was really bad, just inexperienced - much like me.  Some of the art produced there was really wonderful, varying pieces putting me in mind of Hockney, Lowry and other artists who's work I know but names I don't.  Pretty good for a bunch of amateurs.  Good company to be in.

Our instructor was Paula McCartey (not to be confused with the Beatle, who is the wrong sex for starters), who kept quiet about her body of work until the end (not that it's hard to find these days) but turned out to be a very accomplished painter of some local renown (maybe more than local, I didn't go and ask around elsewhere).  Her daughter works in the same building as me it transpires, though I have yet to meet her that I know of.  Small town, big world.

I had to miss two weeks of the class unfortunately due to illness (mine and others) so I started the painting at home since I knew the subject was to be a landscape.  My wife printed up some photo sized landscape images of my choosing, and I went with the one that appealed most at the time.  The image above is me painting, obviously.

Naturally, being me I forgot to take a picture of it after the first stage of painting, so this is after the second.  You can see at the bottom that I'd started by just roughing in lines in blue on a lighter blue field.  I wanted some of that blue to show through the finished piece, I'm not sure it really did, but it made painting the sky easier.  After that I just started painting over the top.  I think I preferred this to using pencil (as I did with the rabbit) as it was less likely to muddy the paint that went over it.

I think this was the stage I had reached when I returned to the class.  Not much else to say about it, although it went down quite well with the other artists.  Oh, no, actually I'm remembering it wrong.  The water was painted before that class, but the cliffs weren't - this is at the end of that week's class.

And this is after the final class.  The color looks really good here - this may be as a result of the better lighting in the class' work area, or it might be because of the camera - this being taken by one of the other students (Thanks Suna!). I really don't know, but I'll take it.

I could have called it quits there I guess, but I really wanted it to feel a little more golden, and my brother sugested it looked like a hairy green woman lying down in a river , looking up from her feet. Once he'd said it I could see it as little else so I spent a final couple of hours on it after Christmas adding more fall colours and fog and detail before calling it finished.

and that's the end of my adventures in Painting Class.  Unless I do another, which I probably will at some point.  I need to come up with something to paint just for myself now though - not going to improve otherwise...

Painting Class: Squares and Mutant Rabbits

I blame Assassin's Creed III and our cats on my lack of productivity lately (not really, it's entirely my own fault of course). The cats can prove a constant distraction, especially Ferris, who seems to be going through his kitty teen years and therefore doing the one thing he's not allowed to do, which is go on the table and counter-tops in the kitchen, and then stare contumaciously at everyone until you do something about it. He especially likes to do this repeatedly when I'm sketching and there's no-one else around, so there's more cat moving and less sketching than there should be.

Assassin's Creed III however is just a really enormous game with lots to do and fills me with conflict as it involves murdering my countrymen* in large numbers in a bid to remove them from American shores (It's set during the Revolutionary War of Independence - That's a combination of both the US and UK names for it if you were wondering).

You're not here for excuses though, you're here for ART. Not much to be found unfortunately, but carry on if you fancy a giggle at my expense.

Yes, it's a little sad and unfinished, some of the reasons why can be found below, as well as why I'm not terribly disheartened by it (though I am a little embarrassed).  The photo quality is dreadful - I'll need to work on that if I want to post paintings from now on - ugh.

Nine weeks ago I started an eight week painting class. Some of you may recall my last attempt at painting way back in January. I was planning to have another go soon after, but I realised that I really had no clue what I was doing and should probably take a class to at least learn the basics such as how to mix paint and handle a brush.  It took me almost ten months to get there, but I finally did it.  Cost a fortune too - not the class, all the paint.  Good paint is expensive!  If I paint a picture with a lot of red I'll need to take out a loan (Cadmium red is particularly pricey, although you can get a hue version which is cheaper).

I didn't bore anyone with my background beyond what my job is, so it was nice not being in a situation where anyone expects you to actually produce something spectacular (and them being subsequently disappointed), especially since I really know next to nothing about actual paint.

The first few weeks were spent painting simple things, such as a colour wheel and some transitions between various shades and colours. I'm not going to scan those in as one colour wheel is much like another, except mostly better than mine, you'll just have to use your imagination (or possibly google if you don't know what a colour wheel looks like).

That's me painting squares. I think I was painting transitions between various yellows and blues and blacks to make green. I didn't know mixing black with yellow would give some excellent greens prior to this (that's the sort of thing I took the class for).  Actually, no, I lie, it's me painting transitions between complimentary colours - the greens were the week after.

So on week three we started on a still life. We had a choice of two, and I chose the bunny one, because who doesn't like a bunny? The photo above is from week six of the class because I forgot to take one the first two weeks we were painting this.

I roughed it out in pencil and started painting. Then the next week I painted some more. I forgot to get a picture of the painting the first week as well, so this is how it looked on the second week of work.

After that I... you guessed it, painted some more. It's worth noting that the class was one day a week for three hours (about 2 to two and a half hours of that was painting), and between sessions the still life was struck and then put back for the next time. There were a lot of variables that could move, and did. You'll note the ribbon in my picture, and some of the locations of things is different than those in the photograph. That's because they moved, as did the light, as did I. I could blame all that on my Rabbit looking a bit wonky (because he was at a slightly different angle each week), but in all honesty I'm pretty sure I sketched him in a little wonky and a little fat, so it's far more my fault than any slight variations in position.

I'm not particularly pleased with it, but the rest of the class seemed to like him, mutated though he is. Apparently the colours I chose for him are appealing and his eye went down well (with a nice Chianti and some fava beans, probably).

Despite having little desire to finish it, and not being happy with the current result, I'm still pleased I did it because I learned a lot in the process. Some of which will hopefully be reflected in my next piece (It's in progress - the class has finished but I have a little more to do on it before I'll call it done). One of the things I learned was that painting for real takes a lot longer than painting digitally. Most of that time, for me, comes down to mixing the paint. Digitally you just pick the colour you want and go at it, but real media takes time to mix for every single variation - there were quite a few colours here, so it took a while (~6-8 hours total?). If I was painting this digitally it would be a lot faster - I'm guessing I could speedpaint it in 90 minutes without issue, and probably more accurately as it's easier to fix mistakes... I may even do that at some point.

Still, painting from life rather than photographs also has it's challenges, and I don't do nearly enough working from life in general. Maybe this will inspire me to do more of it in future.

So Turkey-Day is fast approaching, and I'll be away for that. I'll try and get some sketching done. When I get back I have something to keep me busy for about a week (not going to spoil it too much, but it's another Doctor Who picture, my last for a while), then I'll finish my next painting from the class and post a write up. Somewhere in there I'll get October's meager sketching scanned so you can see that too. Things to look forward to, or dread - I'm almost back to full speed again though I think, and that can't be a bad thing.

Sorry for the large amounts of text and small amount of pictures this post - but not half as sorry as my fingers, because they had to type it all.



*That's my actual countrymen by the way, not the character's countrymen, and a distressingly large number of the rooftop guards seem to be specifically Welsh and yell things at you like "Oi, get down! Are you deaf? Ge'down before I come over there!" Which is slightly creepy and uncannily accurate as I'm usually yelling the exact same thing at the cat. I'm starting to sound like my Dad...