This was when I was about halfway done. It took a long time to do all of the leaves because there are so many and I had to do individual details and values for each one. I really like the idea of this picture, and I like how I combined a bunch of reference pictures I saw and made my own kind of image. I planned for the moon to be smaller, as you can tell from my composition sketch, because I wanted the main focus to be on the girl, but then I didn't want the city to be any bigger and I needed to fill the space. I think it still looks good and adds brightness. At first I just wanted the girl's hair to be super curly, but then I decided to make her have dreads instead. I don't know how evident it is that her hair is dreads, but I think it looks cool.
This was my first scratch board, and it wasn't that hard and turned out well. Aside from being tedious, I liked making it and I can see how it's great for texture. I don't like doing black and white things as much as I like doing things in color, but it was fun and different to do a scratch board because everything is either black or white and it's fun get different values from it. I had to stop and look back at what I was working on a lot during the process to make sure I didn't want to get too white at any part. Nothing got too white except for maybe the hair and parts of the tree. My favorite part of the tree bark is the branches at the top right because of the different values, and I wish I had done that throughout the whole tree. I also wish I had stuck with scratching in the same direction on the tree because it doesn't look very realistic or textured and looks random. I love the leaves because up close you can see the detail in each leaf and I really tried keeping the varying values in. The only thing I'd change about the leaves is to add more in the middle instead of having an open space with just the trunk. I also really like the building and palm tree combination with the grass. I like how the buildings aren't detailed with windows or anything but have shading. The trees and grass have a good texture that I like. I was skeptical to add a face to the girl, but I added eyes and eyebrows and ears lightly and I think it looks way better than it would have with just an empty face.
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After I painted a red base all over, I started painting the sky, my leggings, and the overhang thing. I figured I'd start out with the least detailed parts of the picture. Here I finished the overhang, painted a first layer of paint on the sidewalk and street, and added more value to the leggings. While I was doing the traffic light I smudged part of the sky and tried to fix it up, but it only looked worse so I decided to leave and go back to it later. At this point I had covered most of the canvas in paint, but I still had to add more details and fix some parts up. This is my first oil painting, so a lot of this process was just learning how to use the oils. You can see my progression in the painting itself. The hammock,one of the last things I did, is one of my favorite parts because of the bright color scheme and streaks. I also really like the street and sidewalk because of the different colors I incorporated. I learned that oils are easily blended and that it instead of completely mixing the colors I was using to get one color, it's better to just have all the colors peeking through.
I had the most trouble with the perspective of the legs and getting the shoes to look real. I think the leg perspective looks pretty good and that I succeeded in showing the highlights and shadows without using any black. I really like the white part of the shoe on the left because of the shadows, and I like the shape of both of the shoes, but I could've added more detail or different shades to make them look more realistic. The shadow on the advertisement stand thing was hard because I made it a little too big but didn't bother going back to fix it because I knew I'd mess up the sidewalk in the process. I do, however, like the different values in the shadow. Coming from only using acrylic paints previously, the fact that oils basically don't dry became a challenge as I worked. I kept trying to touch up little things and messing them up because I'd smear a bigger area than I was trying to fix in the first place. I learned to just go with my mistakes and layer. I love how the colors turned out in every part of the painting, and I can see how oils are really fun and freeing with the layers of paint and blending and brightness of it all. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
June 2016
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