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
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
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!!
