January 18th, 2009

Painting again

At the beginning of December I decided that I wanted to get back into art, in particular painting in Oils. I haven’t had much experience with oils so this presented both a learning opportunity and an outlet for some pent up creativity.

So I’ve been painting. Initially I was a bit apprehensive to get started, which is natural, but once I did, wow, I haven’t looked back. As a perk, I’ve rediscovered music and fallen behind on some TV shows. All good.

Rather than dive in head first and tackle big complex paintings I wanted to work on some basics to get myself perpared for the ‘serious’ projects.

1. Observation. This is one of the first things I like to do when getting back into art projects (usually have breaks of many years between attempts). To get this muscle back in shape I’ve opted to do a bunch of still life’s until I feel comfortable with the medium and process. In the past I’ve used life drawing class as a great way to get back in shape.

2. Oils as a medium. It’s been years since I had an intro to oil painting class so I feel like I’m totally back to basics. I’m certainly learning a lot with each painting.

3. Process. I like process, I like to know what’s behind a piece of work, the different steps taken, so I’ve been reading books and watching videos to get exposed to as many different and not so different approaches to painting with oils.

To help me along I’ve loaded myself up with a few good books that are not the typical how to paint variety but ones that get deeper into colour theory, mixtures, harmony and all that good stuff. The books I’ve got right now are Fill Your Oil Paintings with Light and Color, Helen Van Wyk’s Favorite Color Recipes and Mastering Color. All really good books so far, it’s going to take me a while to get through them. I’ve also been taking advantage of all the great demos on you tube, check out my youtube favorites for a good sampling to start with. I’ve also found a wonderful ustream show by Dave the Painting guy, Dave paints portraits and takes his audience thought he process from start to finish over as many sessions as it takes. I’m not painting portraits yet but I have been learning quite a bit through listening and observing Dave’s painting process and techniques.

So here are a few still life paintings I’ve done over the last month. Nothing groundbreaking here but everyone has to start somewhere.