Hi, I paint weird things.

[herzeleid]

Well this is my first post. I'm looking for some serious help. Here are two paintings I am working on.. I am new to oils, and apparently I have a lot of learning to do... :( I started using oils because acrylics were not suiting my needs (such fast drying time!) so I got some W&N water mixable oils, and so far I do enjoy them, but most of the time I just end up leaving my desk frustrated! I hope with all the wonderful artists that I've seen here, I can get some good advice :)

First painting: A strange bird-skull-man! I am completely frustrated with this one... I tried to just block in colors, but the body just looks like utter crap, as well as the rocks... The rocks I tried to complete in one layer, obviously a mistake. So the foreground rock (on the right-ish) I just left with a base layer... I don't like rocks..

My camera also sucks and the colors got a little butchered. Help with base layers and blocking in colors?

Second painting: this is of my dog Phoenix. The reference I'm using is here: http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/photo.php?pid=3426971&id=146122157847 This one... I don't know, I tried a different way of blocking-in lights and shadows, yet it still looks bad and I can't figure out a good way to blend them together! Help on blending? :(

Also got a reflection from my lamp on this one. Ugh, need new camera.

Thank you all for looking :)

[yakker0117]

Weird maybe....but pretty good stuff!

[dcorc]

I've taken the liberty of grabbing the ref-pic of the dog, and sampled various areas:

http://www.wetcanvas.com/Community/images/17-Jan-2010/30792-dog.jpg

You will notice that the colours are a lot more dull and muted than they seem to be in the context of the image - but these are the colours you need to mix on the palette to accurately reproduce the image.

Rather than thinking of getting large transitions between different colours by blending, a better approach is to try to hit the colours spot-by-spot, like building up a mosaic from tiles, and then minimally blend the edges between these. Also, realise that traditional paintings were not generally painted in a single layer, but in a series of layers which built upon, reinforced and refined the preceding layer.


Dave

[herzeleid]

Thanks Dave! I should probably do that myself, grab the colors before I begin when using a reference.. The photo of the painting actually makes the colors a lot brighter than they are, but after seeing your eyedropper-palette, they are definitely the wrong colors! I will have to go back and fix those. Just gotta wait for it to dry now!

[stapeliad]

Hi, welcome to WC! Dave gave you good advice on the dog. About your bird man- knowledge of anatomy is what will make this work. :)

[rlw230]

Dave - is that a type of software you used to get the color spots?

[Hywel]

Hello, new to WC too.

This is a guess which is most likely wrong but; he just used clone and blurred the clone? then put arrows to it.

Nice style herzeleid. Like the birdman reminds me a little of a combination of a Plague doctor/ hermit/ the ubuntu bird thing. Though the birdman looks like its sitting above the stone kind of.

[dcorc]

Dave - is that a type of software you used to get the color spots?

I used photoshop to colour pick, (using the "eyedropper" set an a "5x5 average") and then dab down 100% opacity 19-pixel spots on a 128,128,128 RGB background (mid grey)


Dave

[rlw230]

Thank you