First draft of Iron Man painting
I got around to doing a quick draft of a painting I aim to do in the future (due to an agreement). The goal was to pick a scene from a Marvel movie and paint it, so I picked Iron Man. This is my first draft to see if I could get a decent approximation of the colours I’d need for the scene. It’s painted on a 7″x9″ canvas board.
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- Test painting
Niagara Falls painting
This was my first attempt with an actual canvas (previous attempts were on canvas paper or Masonite board). I’ll double check the exact size, but I think it was 5×7
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- Niagara Falls
Painting of Peggy’s Cove
This is yesterday’s painting project. It’s a scene from Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia on a 5×7 canvas board. Original reference photo taken by Julie King
Teapot Study 2
My second attempt at painting the same teapot. I used a Masonite panel as a support for the first time.
Teapot Study 2
Teapot Study 1
Here’s a picture of a painting I did this evening. It took about an hour to finish.
Teapot study 1
Bottle Study
Here’s my first attempt at painting a wine bottle (or anything glass). I ended up posting it on an art criticism subreddit and got some great feedback for improvement.
Learning to Paint: Painter’s Algorithm
I had an important lesson this weekend in learning to paint. I painting a set of peppers with some suggested techniques and colour recipes from a book. The book suggested that I block in my shapes by painting in areas using the midtones of my components. This means that if I have a picture of peppers, I paint the basic shape of the peppers in, then the stems, then the background.
This blew my mind, and I’ll tell you why. In computer graphics and rendering, we use what’s called the “painter’s algorithm”; we draw the shapes in our scenes background first, then foreground. I had always thought that all paintings worked this way; doing your full backgrounds and working forward with layers. While some artists may still do this, depending what their medium (oil, acrylic, watercolour, etc), it isn’t the rule in the way I was expecting it. Furthermore, some colours of paint are transparent or translucent, meaning that some or most of the background will still show through the layer. This makes it not very ideal for some pieces, as you’d have to do multiple layers, or put in a layer of opaque paint first to get the colours you want to show through.
Essentially, my lesson was this: don’t assume that your current techniques are the best, or even the ones you will continue using in the future. Always try to find new ways to do things, even if you like how you paint now. You might like the next technique even more.
Long weekend painting projects
I just came back from a long weekend. Here’s some snapshots of some of the projects I played around with. They’re all about 2-3 inches in width.
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- First time using palette knife 100%
Jake Seigel's Schemes 