Seascape lessons

Last weekend I started working on the Seascape level 1 course in learn to paint Academy. There are five lessons to create for seascapes. The first week, or at least the first session, is painting the sky for all four paintings. Then each session Builds on the previous by adding the ocean, the beach, the large structures, then finally the detail. The first and second session went so fast that I thought surely I would have it done this weekend. Not so much.

I finally finished the first three and should be able to finish the 4th one this week as well as the final session which is painting a Seascape from beginning to end in one sitting.

Here are the first three.

PS.... So I lied. Okay, not really. I decided to hit it again (instead of doing all the other things I SHOULD be doing).  All four of the lessons are posted below.

painting a human face

SO.... Since I was able to draw an acceptable sketch of my daughter, I decided to try to paint a portrait of her.  It was both successful and unsuccessful and the same time.

It is successful in that it is a decent portrait, but it is clearly not my daughter. I also had trouble with skin tones, blending and so forth so the chin and neck especially have many layers and is the paint is bumpy. Maybe this unknown lady just need some special lotion for crepey skin. (watch late night infomercials if you don't know what that is.)

Sketching? ME? Really?

I am taking a course through Learn to Paint Academy on painting people. Before you can paint them you have to sketch them. OMG, I can't sketch anything! This is gonna be bad!


In honesty, the class project was to sketch simple figures, without detail in the faces. But I jumped in the deep end.

To my astonishment, I was able to do a sketch of my daughter and it really looks like her.

Then I tried to sketch my eldest. I will not show that one because she is looking at of angle, about 1/4 profile and slightly looking down. I can't seem to get the perspective correct. I will continue to look for a good picture of her that I can sketch.

Then I tried sketching a close family member's little girl. She is just over a year and I think I aged her a bit. At one point you could not tell if it was a baby or an old lady.

 

Then.... If I can sketch a face, maybe I can paint a face....

 

Getting more detailed

My daughter had posted a picture of the Eagle Creek Trail just below tunnel falls. I have hiked this area in my younger days and it brought back lots of good memories. So I decided to try to paint it. It took a couple tries but her is the completed painting. (A photo of a painting does not do justice. The colors are fall orange and not as bright as it seems in the picture) over all I am pretty pleased with this one.

I started going through pictures looking for scenes that called out to me. The next one is of Cape Kawanda at Pacific City Oregon. this is one of my favorite get away spots. the only thing missing from this painting is my daughter standing on the sand in the foreground. Maybe some day when I  am more skilled I will add her. I was really pleased with this painting. It was by far my favorite so far. In fact, goofy as it sounds, it brought a tear to my eye to think that I did this. I took paint and brushes and created depth and movement.  Feeling good.

Another origianal from a picture my daughter took

My daughter posted a picture a couple days after I completed the last Moore Art project. I had loved the way my trees and logs had turned out in that painting and when I saw this photo, I wondered if I could do more trees and logs.


There is a lot of artistic liberty taken since most of the logs on the ground were twigs and branches and I did not feel that I was able to do that detailed work yet. So I just made them bigger.


As my own critic, I don't like the foliage on the trees. If I were to repeat this, which I likely will, I would paint them from the background forward (which means a lot more planning of color saturation and graying but allows me to complete background trees and layer on the ones in front. I would also use my new fan brush for the foliage, and make the white flowers in the foreground more recognizable or leave them out entirely. The rest will just come with more experience. (of course I need to complete the sign but my penmanship is awful)

My first request

My youngest showed pictures of my paintings to a friend of hers and she said she was redecorating her bathroom with a flowers theme. She asked if I could do the Gerber Daisy for her.


There is a little more detail in this than any of the ones I have done previously. I am pretty okay with this one.

Orchid

I asked my youngest daughter what her favorite flower was.

She said "Orchid, Why?"

"I  am going to paint you and orchid".

Her response, "Good luck with that" in a not a chance tone of voice.

Challenge accepted!

I went back to Angela Anderson's sight and found this orchid. Should be easy right??


WRONG!!!!!!!!!!! You don't want to know how many layers are under this flower! and I am still not impressed with it.

My first original

I had taken a photo of haystack rock at Pacific City many years ago. The photo has hung in my house for more years than I want to think about. So with a leap, I jumped in and tried to pain the image in the photo. Some have told me that they love it. I think they love me and love the fact that I am trying to paint. I was never satisfied with it but couldn't figure out how to fix it.

Here are my two originals.

A month or so later, I began to see the errors.

 According to Rod Moore, there are a few very common mistakes a new painter makes.

Start with too much color in the sky-- Check


Use too much color, too saturated to be specific -- Check

Failure to show depth. (Warm saturated colors in the foreground and increasingly grayed out less saturated color in the back ground) Failure to put the correct hues, and values in the correct place confuses the eye. I does not make visual sense. --- CHECK

I will re paint this scene within the next month or so and post the result. I am sure it will be much better.

Paintings for family

Okay I have painted something for my niece and nephew, my daughters, my mother, and now a complete stranger.

I saw this picture of an elephant and knew (at least, I hope) my adult niece in who I rarely get to see would love it. She has loved elephants since she was a kid. This one was so quick and easy that it nearly felt like cheating.

Then I asked my mom "what should I paint for my two nephews?" She suggested an oyster for my younger nephew since he is manager of a huge oyster farm. It took me forever to find one I thought I could replicate. (don't know if there is copyright on it. If so, I will take down the post)

Okay, gonna post my failures too. My eldest posted a picture of her sitting at the top of a mountain trail looking out at the mountain tops in the distance. This is classic saturated color in the foreground and desaturated in the background. I can do this! Not so much. Her shoulder is raised because she is looking back over her shoulder. When I tried to draw her profile in such small proportions, well lets just say it was not very good. I decided to just make her hair cover her face. But the problem is that there is now not a reason for her shoulder to be raised. It does not make sense to the eye. Additionally, her left arm looks broken, the plants look awkward, and the mountains in the back ground are not desaturated and grayed out. And the tree kinda sucks too.

My uncle saw some of my painting and asked me paint one of the waterfall on family property. I have a picture I took years ago and used that as my guide. But it was too dark and I couldn't see detail. So I found other pictures on line and combined them. The result is water falls that are not accurate representations but a composite. Add to that the artist does not have the skills, yet, to accomplish this. I don't know how to make water move over rocks without flowing down hill. I don't have the skill, YET, to get the perspective correct. Here are three paintings and the original photos.

Cups

I saw this on Angela Anderson's site and fell in love. I immediately thought of my sister in law and thought she would really appreciate it.

I was surprised how easy this painting was. The only thing is that I would use a little less paint next time. This is so thick it is almost like painting with a palate knife. I also messed up on the shadow and put the highlight and shadow on the wrong side of the cup in one picture.

I had already posted the picture and lots of folks had responded. The I posted, "have you ever had one of those days where you learn, after being out and about all day, that your clothes are on inside out? Well that's what I feel like today."

Gerber Daisy

Angela Anderson also has a video on painting a Gerber Daisy. It looked simple enough so I set out to recreate her painting. I think this was my first successful painting, It did take three tries to get it right, but the first two can be counted as learning experience. I learned a lot about layering colors, blending, and that awkward point in middle of your painting when it looks like you have ruined it but then after a little more detailing, it all comes together.

One of the biggest issues with this painting was that had gone to buy paints, I had no idea what to buy so I got a boxed set that looked like a good assortment. Well, it is an assortment but assorted neon and metallic colors. So I had to mix a few colors to try to find something close to the ones she was using.


I did get another tube of paint that I thought was closer to the brown she was using and repainted.

Her for your viewing pleasure... my first, second, and third draft of the Gerber Daisy.

Moore Art Academy

Since I had enjoyed the Udemy course so much, I decided to take one of his classes in his art academy. This picture was the first I did in his "learn to paint academy."

There are serious flaws, the biggest of which is the direction of the shadows. The big tree's shadow falls to the left and the shrubs and tree have shadows that come forward. OOPS. The flowers at the base of the tree and the tree at the on the right side of the house were not supposed to be there. They are both covering up significant mistakes.

The Moore Method

I discovered an art teacher on Udemy.com. Rod Moore. He removed all the confusion about which paints to purchase, which brushes to use, and even simplifies the method used to paint a picture.

3 colors, 3 brushes, and 3 steps to a completed painting.

These paintings were done during the Udemy course. Both are sad but the first has a crazy clump of color near the tree on the hill. I had messed up the grass on the hill so badly that I decided to put in a meadow of wild flowers. Not THAT was a crazy idea and totally ruined the picture. I will destroy it now that I have a record of it here. 

 

I redid the painting and am moderately satisfied considering it is the very first landscape I have done and I am still a total newbie.

Painting class

So the day of the painting class finally arrives. There were only four of us and the teacher. One of the students was a repeat attender, (LOL), and the other two had quite a bit of artistic talent in working with miniatures and sketching. I felt like a fish out of water.

The first half of  the class was spent in color theory, making color charts from a few basic colors. I wanted to scream "ENOUGH ALREADY, I know blue and yellow make green, Red and yellow make orange, etc. I want to get to the point of the class and get some painting done." ( I did not realize how important the color theory was and he did not go into it in enough depth to make it interesting or for me to actually learn anything)

Finally we got down to the actual painting. Everyone else had prepped canvas board and I had canvas paper. Again, A fish out of water. One of the other students gave me one of her boards. As soon as I started painting, I realized one of the MAJOR problems with my previous paintings. UNPREPPED canvas paper.




During class, everyone else finished their project while I got only about halfway through and took a picture of the sample to work from at home.

After class, the instructor showed me Gesso, and blending medium. Two things I had never heard of but both are very important to prepping, blending and layering. So now I have a little bit more in my tool box.

Since he had told me I had the wrong type of paints (neon and metallic) I decided to purchase other set of colors. It contains Brilliant Blue, Brilliant Red, Brilliant yellow, white and black. It was not my most brilliant move. When trying to follow along with a YouTube video, my colors don't come close to matching. The colors are TOO Brilliant. But they are somewhat workable.

After I finished my painting, I realized that if have a painting for my nephew, I also needed one for his soon to be little sister. So I decided every little girl should have flowers. I tried, but it ended up looking like, at best, a pansy on a tulip plant. At worst it looks like a pinwheel in grass. But she won't know the difference for a few years and by that time, hopefully, I will be able to paint her a pretty flower.

Sad Sunflower

So, I decided that I might like to try my hand at painting. I did a google search and found Angela Anderson's YouTube channel. She has a lot of beginner videos where you work right along with her. Or as in my case, watch a bit, try to duplicate, and the watch the next few minutes.... The 2 hour video took a couple days to complete, but I did end up with a finished painting, albeit nothing like the one she had done.

At first, I was trying to work along with her without pausing the video. I got behind and did the initial chalk outline from memory. I missed half the petals!!!! So my sunflower is pretty sad looking, but overall, what I DID do, I felt was pretty okay. Okay for a child's painting! Seriously, I learned some technique and brush control.

My first painting

My daughters and I got together for a casual paint night at my dinning room table. I was excited but very nervous. At each step, I looked to my daughters for advise.

They just quoted Bob Ross, "Its your little tree, and you can put it anywhere you want."

Thanks guys.

But, we had a great time, I realized this is something I CAN do with a lot of step by step direction.



Old dogs can learn new tricks!

I have never considered myself to be artistic. Every time I try to sketch anything, it looks nothing like the intended subject. I tend to be drawn more toward realistic art and less toward abstract, therefore, anything I tried to draw would need to at least slightly resemble the subject.

The only success I can remember, albeit marginal,  was as a teenager sitting in the car at Mount Hood I'm trying to sketch the mountain. That effort was marginally successful but not enough to share with anyone. I gave up on trying to sketch and tried a few abstract things but as I said, I don't really appreciate abstract, so no matter what I did in that genre would have been unsatisfactory to me.

For most of my life I have said that I don't have an artistic bone in my body. I truly believe that. In fact I really didn't see things the same way that my artistic daughters see things. When I look at a tree I see a tree. When my daughter sees a tree she sees the various colors and shapes and light reflection and all of the other things that make up the tree. My niece and nephew are amazing photographers and I can see in their photography that they have seen things that were completely invisible to me. This further validated my opinion that my brain was simply wired completely differently.

I should adhere that while in college 18 years ago, I did take a drawing class. I was completely unimpressed by by my lack of talent. I did play with charcoal sketching for a few months and it did enjoy it. I managed to create two or three pieces that I felt were marginally good. I'm not sure why I didn't continue but it was likely because I still felt that I had no Talent.

On my daughter's birthday in April of this last year we decided to have a simple at home painting party with just my two daughters and I. We did a simple one hour painting project and though I felt my painting was was only marginally successful I was immediately bit by the bug. Within the next week or so I went out and bought canvas paper, paints, and brushes. I also signed up for a free painting class to be held a couple weeks later.