while i have enjoyed digital painting for over a decade now, i have only recently begun my journey with oil paints! i decided that i needed more fundamental skills, and i have generally preferred traditional art over digital since experiencing burnout a few years ago. the supplies have been quite an investment on my limited disability budget, but i'm enjoying myself very much! it feels like i should've been doing this all along. this is a page for me to log my learning process and works in progress.

#mygourds

seasonally appropriate still lifing! dug the most interesting little gourds out of the trader joe's $1 bin and arranged them together for ostensibly more portfolio work. i always like the orange/green color combo i think i read some tumblr post a decade ago that claimed it was the most difficult color pairing to handle (i think while discussing van gogh's the night cafe) and my contrarian nature immediately wished to master it. idk abt mastery but i still use it a lot

some nice gourds! that permanent orange is so juicy and bright

Apfel...

crankin more shit out lol. not super creative but not everything has to be a genius idea. bought apples mostly to paint them but i did eat them also. they are honeycrisps. yummy. even my photos of the arrangement looked painterly so i know this ones gonna be good

the apples look great to me mostly (if a little too round and peach-ly) but i didn't squint enough while laying down the color of the bag. ah well i'll fix it on the next layer

Zorn Palette(ish) Figure Study

more portfolio stuff :P the zorn palette is a historical set of colors used by anders zorn in many of his portraits, made up of yellow ochre, vermilion, ivory black, and lead white. lead white is poisonous and i switched in my napthol red for vermilion instead of the typical cadmium red swap but it worked pretty well! you can get an impressive range of skin tones out of these four colors so it really does excel for portraiture, but the lack of blue and green stings me. good exercise anyway! this was also my first successful alla prima <3 done in 3 hours! wet on wet is hard man. photo reference unfortunately from a deleted user on the r/drawmensfw reddit

i really really like this actually hehe i kept looking at my pictures of it on my phone feeling impressed with myself. you guys i think i might be good at painting

Monochrome

i'm signing up for a college painting class in the spring and making a portfolio to prove i don't need to take the 101. like clearly i know how to paint. i went through a bunch of various painting 101 syllabi to find what's often taught in it, monochromes were a common assignment! i picked out some random items as usual, another cat figurine from my grandma's house, a jar i got at the goodwill bins that needs repainting but it has molded strawberries on it, a couple bottles of nail polish idk why they just were the right size, and a mesh reusable grocery bag for texture. this is done in ultramarine, ivory black, and white, plus the sepia oil pastel i sketched it in with

i have to fix the neck of the jar lol but for the most part i quite like this. i'm happy with this composition too i like the crossing lines. the net bag is really not easy to paint but its good to challenge myself
callin it done here! i like it. its a little over highlighted but i dont care anymore

In Memory of Our Caterpillars

i did a lot of cute doodles while raising the monarch caterpillars i've been talking about on my gardening page and i wanted to paint one too! simple as. this is kinda a composite reference in the end, i wanted a fun pose for the cat but my pictures sucked and i couldn't find a good pose in online photos. i'm skimming through a few photos while i work for the different bits, we'll see how it goes!

i'm quite fond of this already hehe i don't think this will take many layers. once this dries, striping time!

Trinket Shelf

i am a big maximalist (junk collector) and i have some fun shelves in my room. this one is the most visually pleasing at the moment and i wanted to paint it! it holds a little bowl i made in pottery class, a venetian jester doll i got at goodwill in ventura, a roman plinth styled candle holder i thrifted somewhere i dont remember, two cat items that hold stuff? one is a toothpick holder i think and the other is maybe a vase? i got from my grandma, a candle in a bumpy cup from the target dollar section a couple years ago, and a pretty cup from marshalls and they are all in gold and green that matches the walls. the whole big shelf is golds and greens actually but this level of it looks best lol. anyway i lit the candle for the reference photo and burnt the underside of the middle shelf a little <3 whoops

first pass! i got some proportions to fix but i didnt rly want to do it subtractively so i will be back for that when this dries. i like the colors so far
shapin up! i just got viridian, green gold, and permanent orange in and they are all helping out a lot here. yippee

Eight-Dollar Bouquet

trying a new kind of still life! grabbed a couple $4 flower bunches from trader joes and arranged them in a pleasing manner in this vase i had on a shelf (i think it was my sisters once and it lived on the floor in the bathroom for a long time until i washed it and put it in my room). half the flowers are pet toxic and i dont have a workspace that my cat cant get into (i work solvent-free so usually shes allowed. yeah theres cat hair embedded in everything) so i took them outside and took dslr photos to base the piece on so they stay outside and i can keep working after they wilt

all set up outside! been using oil pastels to sketch out paintings and it works really well. i like using a bright to add a little smthn to the colors
heres where i got by the end of the night. i was gonna try to do it alla prima but ig i wanna continue and refine more... this is pretty good tho huh i could pass this as finished if i felt like it
second layer... lots more defined! i dont love my greens for this ive actually ordered more green pigments (havent added them to the palette since they arent in my hands yet but i got green gold and viridian) bc i dont think i can mix what i want rn. i also took pictures of the more bloomed bouquet a couple days after the original reference to get more flowers, there will be more purple! i dont think ill be keeping the table bit so blue, i was just being lazy about mixing black, but the contrast with the orange is nice
my grandma liked this wip too much and now im too worried abt fucking it up to work on it much :P some improved flowers and such

I guess I'm doing a doll series

so when i was 13 i really loved the song 'sexy can i' by ray j and i was reaaally sheltered and for some reason i couldnt conceptualize the lyric 'no panties no shirt' as meaning the woman was naked on the pole (actually the reason is that my father wrote some local laws about nudity in strip clubs and other similar establishments about a year before this and he told me about the work because i used to ask about his cases to have something to talk to him about and therefore i thought fully nude strip clubs were illegal everywhere and not just in certain areas of los angeles county. yes a lot of rap music confused me back then) and i decided to try and draw my bratz doll in my idea of what the stripping outfit could be. when i finished i immediately felt such intense pubescent i-dont-know-im-gay-yet shame that i tore up the drawing and put the pieces in a cup and soaked them in water to blur the pen and mashed the wet paper up into a ball before i threw it away. all that to say this painting is me reaching back in time and telling 13 year old me that its okay i draw naked women all the time now and even get paid for it occasionally <3

first shiny pass! a little simpsons-y at the moment but i needed the yellow base to create the luminosity of the bright red light i put on the doll setup in future layers
im already getting really good at forgetting to take a picture of a layer except in a snapchat from across the room that i happened to save in memories. i went and got some bright colored oil pastels to blend in bc i wasnt sure i could mix paints to the color i needed with my current pigments, but i put back the color i actually needed lol whoops. will buy that soon but i spent too much on supplies this month
i was not very focused this session... sometimes i start painting just bc i realize my palettes skinned over and theres too much cat hair on the canvas and i need to get back to it and this was one of those. still made decent progress
now thats more like it. very happy with the brightness of the front cheek there and the arm, definitely got some other 'anatomy' tweaks to make next time
movin along! i need to scoot the lips over :P that wont be fun. i have a lot of tweaks to make here actually ugh whatever the eyes look good and yes i did move the arm i liked but i like the new one too
lips: scooted. lost a lot of face definition in the process but ill fix that once this dries down. probably time to do the background too :P my least favorite part. idk where im going with the fur coat i need to think a little harder when im doing that
another pass at her back... need to redetail a lot now. i honestly just need to sit down and focus on detailing next and im procrastinating itttt but tbh id rly like to take the still life display down soon she keeps falling over so i will be doing so asap
my phone is starting to not like these colors so i know i'm getting into the right neon zone lol. i think this was a pretty short session, did some fixes, got plenty more to do

Patio Plein Air

one of the reasons i wanted to get into oils was to do plein airs. the full on the go setup is heinously expensive to put together, so im starting on my patio where i can just sit at our old table and carry my stuff in and out in a few trips. my neighbors have nice gardens and the light is always really pretty in the evenings

i didnt like the proportions in my first sketch so i did it again! ill paint over the other one with something else later. comparing a sketch to the washed over version i continued with

first pass of color! i couldve used my brain a little bit more when placing the foliage blocks

second go! i really really like how the lamp head turned out, its crazy how little you need to do to call the effect of shiny metal. decided to simplify the background a bit too

My First Painting

i guess that's a bit disingenuous of a title considering my digital background, but it's still a first! i set up a still life with a rainbow high doll and a little porcelain cat my grandma gave me when we cleaned out their house on a backdrop of one of my shirts with my multicolor lightbulb set to blue for more dramatic light and jumped right in

in the middle of the first layer! i think i was about to quit here and then realized i should get everything covered on the first pass

first pass all done! and extra shiny lol. this stage is always really charming to me i love her blobby little face and i felt like i did well with the colors

well now this one is a little scary isnt she. she really came alive in this one and not in a good way! i was focusing on adding contrast and details in this layer

i have skipped a layer of updates bc i was playing with my cat during the time the last shown layer was drying and she knocked over the still life :/ so i had to reconstruct it and it was a frustrating paint session of redoing her hair and trying to make sure my shadows mostly matched and i forgot the photo. onto this one, i do like the new hair on the left side a lot better! this is when i got the gamblin 1980 paints and added brighter blues and better purples

more refining away... i think this is when i decided her nose was not good and redid it because i was thinking of it too much as a nose and not the shapes of color that it needs to be. or maybe that was the next one.

i got a little carried away blending and highlighting in some spots here lol and my paint was a little too lean for this stage but its ok. i decided to call it with the next layer (maybe 2) so next its time to go back and add contrast again. but im much happier with the background now, i feel like its really come together!

oooh shes so close to done now. i have a few little tweaks and some details i need to put over fixes i did this time but then i think thatll be all! yayyy <:) i like her!!

ok shes done yay!!! i had to come back to it a few times to keep fixing the eyes idk what i did for a while but it was scary. i put the brushes down the second she looked normal again and i think i rly nailed the depth effect that the actual doll has. you cant really tell in this photo but theres some shimmery accent paint i got on sale this month on her eyes and on the cat