Oil-from-life challenge, May 2019: optional "daily painting" theme!

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May 1, 2019 at 12:21 am #472658
Grotius
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Let’s paint from life! As always, feel free to post whatever you like — landscapes, portraits, figures, still lifes, whatever — so long as your work is painted primarily from life.

This month we’re trying something new: an optional “daily painting” theme! If you don’t have time to paint every day, consider doing one painting a week and posting it here. (My guess is only one or two of us will manage to do actual “daily” painting, but I’m going to try!) As always, the theme is just a suggestion; post whatever you like. Four guidelines:

1. Please paint primarily from life — not from photographs or imagination. It’s okay to post finished studio works based on studies from life; in that case, please post the original study as well as the finished work.

2. Please submit something created either last month or this month, not something you’ve done in the more distant past.

3. Please paint in oils. That said, please feel free to post studies in any other medium, so long as you also post your oil painting(s).

4. Please list the size of your painting and support. E.g., ‘”8×10″, oil on panel.’

Optional: Tell us the title of your painting!

—————–

Unfinished works, studies, and outright failures are all welcome. There’s no requirement that you invite comment & critique. If you’d rather post without being critiqued, just say so; that’s fine by me!

You can find older oil-from-life threads in the “hall of fame” sub-forum of the Oil Painting forum.

I hope you’ll all consider posting one or more paintings this month!

- Geoff.
My website and blog: https://www.geoffwatsonart.com/
May 1, 2019 at 3:39 am #821550
ronsu18
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ok let’s get going.
thank you for the new thread ☺. starting off with a weather report:

“sleet May First” oil on D&R student paper 23x30cm

[ATTACH]865574[/ATTACH]

C&C welcome
May 1, 2019 at 4:49 am #821332
moscatel
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Wow Ronsu, love your May First painting. It’s gorgeous. To answer your earlier question, I’m using computer to post. I don’t even have a smart phone .. yet. Glad you were and are able to post though.
Also the view in a room with window is looking very good and interesting to paint!
Holly, beautiful, beautiful flowers and mirror adds interest. Excellent job on that painting.
Grotius thank you for new daily painting thread.

I’m painting away dailies at the moment. I’m exhausted: we were all day yesterday hanging the paintings for the May show. I am very happy because the exhibition place looks very beautiful with lots of excellent art hanging and also because I got mine to a good, visible place. It doesn’t happen often because there are many paintings from other artists so this time it just happened to me. Light is very good in this place and paintings show so well. Tomorrow is opening.

My Art
May 1, 2019 at 6:45 am #821333
moscatel
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Day 1. “Roman Oil Candle”
oil on canvas paper, size: small
Of course my model is not original but a copy of an old oil lamp/candle found in archaeological excavations in Merida, Spain.

Grotius, are you going to post your model with the painting or do you post only the painting? I take photo of both kind but not sure if posting the model along with painting. After all it’s a lot of posting.

Don’t worry about painting every day — Moscatel and I might manage it, but we might not!

Your right anything can happen! :wink2:

To those of you who only follow us:
Painting every day will be hard work, if you haven’t ever done it you can’t imagine how hard it is. Many times, I think, in daily painting you can only focus on certain area of your painting & maybe trying to improve one zone because you just can’t do perfect all of them because you are painting every day. Also if you follow us painting you notice that these daily paintings are done fast. There’s no time to fix everything in these daily paintings. If you paint 31 paintings in a row during one month you actually need to post every day or otherwise you are doing something else like paw (painting a week). What I’m trying to say is that it is very hard, I hope you consider that.

My Art
May 1, 2019 at 10:01 am #821551
ronsu18
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half a sheet gahhhh! my painting is half a sheet for crisps’ sake, 15x23cm and nothing else. there’s too much going on…

moscatel thank you, gorgeous lamp! wonderful clay tones, a warm mood, you have good things to paint! i got nothing and the drift stores here are a joke. if i post a photo from that standard window with the paintable view, i can’t stomach the “whaaaaaaaa?” that will follow. 😆
much, much luck with your show!

and for those who follow us, join us! it’s a really good month for it! keep it simple and small. paint one object many times, different angles, in black&white, all blues, daytime, at night w electric light. find a scrap of paper, gesso it and splurge! you’ll improve your skills so fast there’s no denying. plus, everyone’s extra sweet, no time to think, have to paint 😀.

C&C welcome
May 1, 2019 at 12:44 pm #821417
Grotius
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Ronsu, thanks for leading of us with such a nice painting! It’s a really good “weather report.” It conveys a cool (cold?) gray day, and the trees looks terrific. This is one of my favorites of yours. A great title and a great idea for a painting. I hope we see more weather reports from your neck of the woods this month!

Moscatel, you get credit for this idea, and you also get credit for a wonderful contribution on day 1. I really love that lamp/candle! And yes, PLEASE post the original model — I’m really curious to see it, as it’s such an unusual artifact. I personally think the more posts the better! So yes, if people want to post a photo of their subject, please do so. Maybe I should amend my first post to say so.

Here’s my Day 1 effort — a window outside my home, with some flowering bushes in front of it. As Moscatel says, with daily painting, you have to work fast and loose or you’ll never make it through all 31 days. Just spend an hour, two hours tops, and work small. “At the window,” oil on panel, 8″ x 8″.

- Geoff.
My website and blog: https://www.geoffwatsonart.com/
May 2, 2019 at 4:34 am #821334
moscatel
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Day 2. “Roman Water Jar”
oil on canvas paper, size: small
Again the model is bought from Merida made by local artists.

It still is a mystery for me how my pictures show huge size on this forum although I do resize them as adviced by WC. I set them 800 max pix. Do they look big on your screen?

Ronsu, thanks for your comments and well wishes! :grouphug:

Grotius, great start! Is the window with flowers far from the point you were painting? Good subject matter tho. Thank you for your comments and thoughts will think about it. This morning posting only Day 2. later in the afternoon I have the opening of our group show and WINE with friends.

My Art
May 2, 2019 at 4:52 am #821552
ronsu18
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Grotius if you are going to paint like that, this will be my favourite month. the abstraction flows from you. those leaves and flowers are a poem! thank you for comments, i did spend all morning on that thing, not like there was anything to do in the yard in that weather.

moscatel beautiful again, the shadow below left is very tenderly and sensitively rendered, it’s like a place where the light goes to sleep. i hope your night out with friends is relaxing, make memories!

here’s an opposite to yesterday’s, a carving. a series of statements and a wiped out background. the setup deserves a photo. the model is my OMS cup, it’s on MDF and naturally i wrecked everything within minutes when dipping 😎.

“the cup, the knife and the sugar bowl” oil on D&R student paper 13x23cm May 2nd

– – – and after all that, the https is back and the upload functions are gone!

C&C welcome
May 2, 2019 at 5:51 am #821553
ronsu18
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testing

[ATTACH]865592[/ATTACH]

C&C welcome
May 2, 2019 at 5:57 am #821554
ronsu18
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😀
since nothing remarkable happened before the functions came back previously, i just sat down and jkept logging in and out, shut down,, reboot, several times. wow this is going to be a lot of work. have to find a new virus program.

where were we. well up there’s the dull photo. here’s the carving!
13x23cm oil on paper

[ATTACH]865593[/ATTACH]

C&C welcome
May 2, 2019 at 9:53 am #821555
ronsu18
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kept scratching at it for hours, stopping now. such a small thing.
same same but different.

[ATTACH]865595[/ATTACH]

C&C welcome
May 2, 2019 at 10:51 am #821418
Grotius
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Moscatel, that’s a wonderful Roman jar! Very nice modeling and interesting color. You have the most interesting collection of still-life subjects I’ve ever seen. I guess I need to spend more time shopping for hand-made jars and such. Anyway, really nice job with this.

Your images don’t look particularly large to me. That Roman jar is a little more than half the width of my screen. Actually, my window picture looks wider and bigger than your jar. I think it all depends on the resolution of our computers and phones.

Good luck on your group show! I know how much work is involved. Can you post a photo of the gallery for us?

As for my window picture, I was standing maybe 10-15 meters away? Pretty close.

Ronsu, thank you for the kind comments, and congratulations on keeping pace with the daily-painting challenge! I wonder, did you literally “scratch” at the painting with a palette knife, because it has a crunchy, scratchy texture that I’m enjoying a lot. If you keep this up, it will indeed be an interesting month.

- Geoff.
My website and blog: https://www.geoffwatsonart.com/
May 2, 2019 at 10:53 am #821419
Grotius
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And here’s my daily painting #2. I was really happy with this, in part because it turned out well, and in part because I painted it standing up with no back pain. (My physical therapist has been giving me tips on posture while painting.) “The color purple,” oil on panel, daily painting #2, 8″ x 10.”

- Geoff.
My website and blog: https://www.geoffwatsonart.com/
May 2, 2019 at 4:19 pm #821508
ntl
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Ronsu, that’s beautiful!
Moscatel, well done. Good attention to detail, esp with the shadowing. It’s an interesting shape.
Your waterjar is delightful. Again great shadows show the shape.

Geoff, nice! Do you set up the day before, or is setup part of the painting time?
Ronsu I hope you can get that figured out. Your piece is beautiful.
Geoff, so very believable. Wonderful colors, pleasant scene.

I worked to do this yesterday, but spent the day preparing canvases and the paper to do this. I don’t know how many I’ll be able to do, but here’s my start.

ceramic cream pitcher ~5″x7″ on acrylic covered paper
May 3, 2019 at 12:26 am #821420
Grotius
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ntl, thanks for joining the party! I enjoyed seeing the cheerful colors in your pitcher painting. If you spent a day preparing canvases and paper, I’m hoping that means you’ll be contributing more!

As for my setup, I do it in the heat of the moment, with no prior preparation, lol. I often buy pre-toned panels (by Jack Richeson) because I’m lazy. If I’m using a white gessobord, I’ll tone it at the easel with a thin wash of water-miscible oil or maybe a little acrylic paint, or maybe I won’t tone it at all.

Actually, site selection is one of the hardest aspects of plein air painting for me. Not every scene lends itself to a good composition, or at least not for me. Ideally there are shadows that help lend form to subjects, and of course an interesting arrangement of shapes. But some artists can do wonders with the most unpromising subjects: witness James Gurney and his artistic renderings of muddy puddles and garbage cans. I waste a lot of time looking for suitable subjects.

Speaking of setup, Moscatel – I rarely remember to take a picture of my setup. If I remember to do so, I’ll post it along with my painting.

- Geoff.
My website and blog: https://www.geoffwatsonart.com/
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