I like how oil paintings look so I thought it would be fun to paint some.
I started with my tulip photo.
This seemed like a nice easy one. Round pretty shapes, no annoying little details. Easy to draw.
I wish I had taken a picture of the painting after the first night I tried it. It looked aweful! The paint wouldn't go right. I couldn't deal with my brush on the easel, the paint was wierd, the canvas was wierd, the vertical angle was wierd. I was discouraged.
(Insert aweful picture of incompetent tulips here). ;-) Maybe I'm glad I didn't take a picture of it.
So then the next night I tried again. We're up to last Sunday night now. I had a brainstorm and ditched the easel. I'm used to painting (ok, painting 10 years ago at least) on a flat surface - and trust me, vertical is completely different! All of a sudden the brush would obey, and I could draw again. Well, as much as I could ever draw, which was only ever "sort of". The paint was alot easier to mix to get the right color. After this session, the tulips actually looked like tulips. Kind of stripey, but they had hue and brightness gradations, were closer to the right color, and looked round. The stems still were a very poor excuse for stems, but I still considered it a success in progress. Still needed alot more work though. But I was willing to try painting again and had this optimistic feeling about it.
Then came tuesday night, the official first night of painting class. We had a previous class, but it was just talking and getting the list of art supplies to bankrupt ourselves buying. OMG, Nervous!!! In class, the teacher handed out a teeny weenie picture (actually two pictures), of an apple. Or, if you were feeling ambitious, an apple with marbles and a rock. Zzzz. Ok, well, I thought I'd try the easy one.
I got out two canvas boards (just little cheap ones) bc from my previous vast two experiences with oil painting, I knew that it takes days and days and days for paint to dry. And that's if you thin in out alot and use alot with quik-dry medium. So anyway, i'm painting, painting, painting. I did two versions of the apple. One was "tight", all controlled. the other I did painting with my finger. AND THEY BOTH STANK EQUALLY! Funny enough, in both, the apple looked like it was about to roll over. And like it was buried half into the paper. And all sorts of other stuff was wrong with it. Basically I had drawing problems, paint handling problems, color making problems. Totally frustrating! See for yourself. Pleh!
Ok, I'll admit, it does look like an apple. But it doesn't look like a ROCK STAR APPLE! I want to be an expert at this right now! immediately!!! (stamps foot) (It looks worse close up and in person.) Interestingly, everybody's picture ended up looking like a pretty good apple. Mine was probably the worst or second to worst in the class. And this is with help! The teacher worked on the top of it. Here's the "loosey goosey" one:
It sorta looks more like a nectarine or something. :-( Still not a ROCK STAR APPLE! And still tipping over! And no clue what to do for the background. There was this one gal in the class who had the most awesome abstract wavy lined background. I'm not very good at thinking up stuff like that.Ok, that was last night, Tuesday night. Tonight I came home and, in the spirit of getting back on the horse, worked some more on my tulips. It does make a big difference if you like the subject you're painting. I just didn't like the apple much, but I do like the tulips. So today I was able to make the left tulip look almost good, and sort of try to make the middle and right ones look sort of out of focus. And I fixed the stems a bit, just put a dark base to work with -- in about 3 years when it dries. You can either work starting with light and gradually get darker and darker (like water color - might as well just use water colors I guess), or start dark and layer on light colors. If you try to do both it seems like the paint gets all stirred up and ends up looking like mud. But what do I know? I'm just a stupid NOOB BEGINNER! (Argh!) [I read that other stuff on the internet.] You're supposed to work "fat over lean". First layers of paint lean, later layers fat. However, I can't seem to understand what that means! Thick layer of paint? More oil v. less oil? (the quick dry medium is oily, so that's more oil???) Anyway, I decided to just paint with plain old paint, no thinning or thickening. If you do it wrong, your paintings will crack. Guess mine are going to crack bc I have no clue!
So anyway, here is the current state of the Tulips. The stems need to be filled out, and the background needs . . . I don't know what it needs but it looks like a baby barfed on it and then somebody wiped it up half heartedly and smeared it everywhere. I have to go buy some beige paint - turns out it's really hard to mix beiges and browns without them looking like baby by-products.
Oh, and as a last thought, here's a pic of my [brand new] dining table fitted out for painting. I repurposed my old ratty bedspread for a painting cloth, but I need to get an actual canvas one bc this one's not going to protect if anything spills.
