Sunday, June 28, 2015

Bird Practice - Acrylic Painting

I used the craft quality acrylics because they are more opaque, more liquid, less glossy and I find them easier to work with.
I started with the background and it wasn't too hard to get smooth blending effect, but it had to be done quick while the paint is still wet.
I enjoyed working on the bird itself but I couldn't get the feather detail that I wanted because the painting is really small.
This painting was also supposed to be photorealistic looking. As I said before (on the oil painting post), I think it would be best to leave that look to the actual photos, but it is rewarding to know I can create something that looks so similar to a photo.
I prefer the acrylic medium over other mediums because it dries fast and it's easy to repaint and fix mistakes.

Time: 2 hours
Fun level: 8/10
Difficulty level: 8/10
Success level: 9/10

I liked that it didn't take a lot of time and I got really used to painting fast, so the no waiting time for it to dry is a plus in my book.
I was engaged with working on this painting for the full 2 hours and I enjoyed that.
I gave it a high difficulty score because for many people, the fast pace is a problem and getting close to photorealism does require a lot of skill and practice.
I gave myself a high score because I really like the end result, subtracted 1 because the grey feathers could look better.

Saturday, June 27, 2015

Bird Practice - Collage

Fun fun and more fun!
I found it very exciting assembling a bunch of different colors and textures and patterns together to make this image... I guess flipping through a clothing magazine looking for the colors I wanted, added to the fun as well :)
There was a lot of mess to clean up at the end though.

Time: 2 hours
Fun level: 9/10
Difficulty level: 4/10
Success level: 9/10

-1 point in fun for the aftermath clean up.
It wasn't too hard to make and I even did similar collages with my younger students and they made wonderful pieces, even if the colors weren't matching too much the reference image, overall it looked very interesting and expressive.
I gave myself a high success score because while it's not perfect, I really like how it turned out.

Friday, June 26, 2015

Bird Practice - Colored Pencils Drawing

I have pretty cheap colored pencils so it could look better with higher quality pencils. I couldn't get the colors to be as bright as I wanted.
I personally didn't enjoy this drawing as much, it's not a very forgiving medium, hard to erase.
I enjoy mixing colors, and with colored pencils it's better to pick the closest color pencil to what you need because they don't blend as well as paint does.

Time: less than 2 hours.
Fun level: 5/10
Difficulty level: 7/10
Success level: 6/10

It wasn't one of my favorite practice pieces, but I definitely didn't hate it. I found it kind of tedious to look for that pencil that had the color I needed.
I rated the difficulty level at pretty high because there is very little room for mistakes.
Overall I think I did an okay job considering what I had to work with.

Thursday, June 25, 2015

Bird Practice - Watercolor Painting

I love watering down every paint type that I use (make washes and glazes), but for some reason I never became good friends with watercolors.
This was my 2nd attempt for this practice because I made the first one on a different kind of watercolor paper, lower quality I assume, and I didn't get even close to the effect that I wanted.
So please note, the quality of the paper is really important.
I wanted to keep it simple looking and not do a lot of details.
Watercolors require a lot of layers and some waiting time between each layer application.

Time: 1.5 hours
Fun level: 6/10
Difficulty level: 9/10
Success level: 5/10

It's a simple painting but still had to wait for it to dry, I don't like waiting.
The painting part itself is challenging which makes it pretty fun.
While this painting wasn't difficult to make, I find that watercolors are the hardest medium to master.
I did get it close looking to the reference image, but I'm not really satisfied with it. I could do better but that would require a lot more practice.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Bird Pactice - Pencil Drawing

Working on this piece, made me remember just how much I loved drawing and realize how much I missed it.
Overall it was a very fun process that I really enjoyed.
Pencil drawings have this almost instant satisfaction effect since as soon as you finish working on a small area, like the eye or the beak for example, it's already visible how good it looks, while as with most painting techniques, that feeling only comes at the end.
So as I was adding each of the feathers, it already looked good and kept getting better.
I made the background a little more abstract looking because I just enjoyed it too much and got carried away, in retrospect it would've been a lot better of a practice to do the background a lot smoother and more similar looking to the photo reference.

Time: Around 3 hours
Fun level: 9/10
Difficulty level: 5/10
Success level: 7/10

I would give it 10/10 in fun, but I reduced a point because of the background, I assume that if I had to make it better blended and realistic, it would take more time and not as fun.
Difficulty level at 5 because I found it rather easy, once you get enough control over the marks you can make, it becomes pretty simple. It was all done with one simple mechanic 2B 0.7mm pencil.
I gave myself a pretty high success score because I didn't smudge anything and I have loose and free lines here and there that keep the drawing interesting looking, I took 3 points away for the background.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Bird Practice - Oil Painting

I made this painting on heavy paper. Oil paint gets absorbed into the paper and dries up really fast, on canvas it dries a lot slower. I can't exactly say what is better, paper or canvas, it depends on personal preference.
It being painted on paper worked with me on some sections and against me on others. For example it was pretty hard to get a smooth blend on the background because it was drying fast and I had to keep reapplying paint. I found that it's a lot easier to just add not really well mixed paint and then smooth it up with the finger instead of a brush, that was fun! Who can say no to finger painting, right?
On the bird itself, it was to my advantage that it dried quickly. I made a thin layer of paint as the under color and built up the smaller and thinner brush strokes to get the light feathery effect.
It's a rather small painting (5x6.5”/12x16 cm) so I couldn't get the amount of detail work done that I wanted, at the end I was working with a brush that has like 3 hairs and even that wasn't thin enough.
I was trying to make this painting photo-realistic looking and I think I got close to it. I am still against the photorealism paintings, because I could get a much better picture if I just printed the reference image, it wouldn't be as time consuming and I think it gives more value to the art of photography.. but... seeing that I am able to create something like it is rewarding.

Time: 3.5 hours
Fun level: 7/10
Difficulty level: 8/10
Success level: 8/10

The process wasn't as fun, I didn't really enjoy how much I had to rework the background, but I really enjoyed the way it looked at the end.
While oil is still one of the more forgiving mediums, every mistake costs a lot of waiting time. When paint is still wet, it's hard to cover it up without the colors mixing, this painting being on paper did help but still took time. Trying to remove the paint by adding more oil or mineral spirit and wiping it off, put the rest of the painting at risk since the painting is small.
I gave myself a high success score because I think the end result looks pretty good.

Monday, June 22, 2015

Bird Practice

For those who know me, I mainly do abstract work... And the figurative works from TooMuchColor project are very stylized and somewhat abstract looking as well.
So I decided to challenge myself and see what I can do with other styles and different mediums.
I documented my impressions of every piece that I made so far and will be posting them every day.