Sunday, January 24, 2016

Big Fish Painting







I worked on this painting in the early fall of 2015 but I'm just getting around to posting it. I had seen a similar fish painting in a store, really liked it and thought about purchasing it. An artist friend came over to my house so I showed her a photo of the painting I liked and said I was thinking about buying it. She suggested I buy a big canvas and paint a fish myself, she said "what do you have to lose? Just try it." So that's exactly what I did. I bought a 36x36" canvas and used the photo of the fish painting I liked just as REFERENCE. I changed the fish to make it my own and really had fun with it. 

My painting is really a fun, decorative piece painted in acrylic. The first photo shows how I started with a very basic underpainting. I mixed black and ultramarine blue for the background and a beige for the fish. Next I added colored glazes to the fish mixing my acrylic with gel medium to make it transparent. I applied the paint on the fish with brushes and sponges. I had the most fun with the eye because it is so definitive and strong. The second photo is the fish in progress and the third shows the finished painting. The last picture is my finished painting hanging over my couch. I love to look at it every day and think about what I learned while painting in acrylic.


Tuesday, January 19, 2016

Acrylic Painting




In the beginning of January I began taking an acrylic painting class with instructor Kelley MacDonald at the Providence Art Club. One of our first exercises was to take our subject and paint it first in black and white, second in black white and one mid gray and third in black, white and all shades of gray. It is a great learning exercise to help me become familiar with my subject before I paint it in color. I had to really think about simplifying the subject into first only two values, then three and then all values and I spent several hours on the exercises. The lesson plan helped me learn more about the different values in the turtle's shell before I took into consideration all of the colors.

My finished turtle painting is on 8x8" canvas.

Sunday, January 10, 2016

One more Pet Portrait





This is my latest pet portrait of Logan. It's 8x8" on Bisque Canson Mi Teintes paper. The tone of the paper compliments the fur in the dog. I used both Prismacolor and Faber Castell Polychromos colored pencils to work on the portrait. Logan in progress and my reference photos are beneath the finished drawing.