Return of the big canvas

With longer sessions, I usually take on a larger canvas. It is often a test of stamina and it is easy to get discouraged after hours of work.

However, I am a firm believer of measuring progress not by one’s destination but by the journey. As long as you learn something yea?

Plus, I have a “secret weapon”!

A good teacher! ♥ 洪老师 ♥

As a beginner, it is normal to feel overwhelmed. At such times it is necessary to pause and take a step back (often literally), and it really helps to have an experienced eye guide you and help pull you along. It’s amazing how Teacher is able to catch on to problem areas and dive right in to help, yet never being critical and always encouraging. I’m truly blessed.

April 8: Tumble of apples, blood oranges and pears

Last Sunday, after struggling all day, I finished with… these few blobs of colour.

As a painting, it was so far from being completed, it would take another 2-3 sessions to get it right. I was feeling frustrated… my fruits look nothing like the way I wanted them to… there was much left to do with the basket…

But from a learning point of view, it was otherwise a good day.

Take a look at the jug again.

In my eyes, the jug was white. But what I missed was that in painting, white is never really just white! It’s a simple logic that often gets forgotten.

I forgot about environmental influences..reflected colours… everything I ‘knew’ flew out of the window in my distress.

Fortunately, Teacher was there to save the day. While I ended the session with yet another incomplete painting adding to my stack, I learnt something.

And all is still good.

May 5: Wooden mystery box

Earlier this Sunday, it was a full day session again.

It was a pretty complex set up with the ornate wooden box with lots of intricate details, coupled with the flowers, bottles, vase, stones and aromatherapy burner… I almost didn’t know where to start.

But eventually I did. I reminded myself that this is a journey.

Teacher gave us pointers on the topic of shadows. How does one know where and how to start?

Well, firstly, find the direction of light. On the side of the object that would likely cast a shadow, pick up a dark shade (he recommends using burnt umber and a dark blue mixed, rather than black) and confidently place the paint onto the canvas in a thin line.

Thereafter, pick a middle shade (between shadow colour and the colour of the surface upon which the shadow is cast) and softly blend the edges. Note also that the shape of the shadow takes the shape of the object.

Like so…

And thus ends another fruitful session.

Hope you learnt something today!

Marching off to a new April: Painting smaller and faster

I’ve been painting in A4 for the past few weeks. Working with a smaller canvas was a refreshing change. I was not only able to finish faster but also train my eyes to work more effectively.

Ironically, working on a smaller surface, I was able to paint more freely, focusing less on the details. Though I do find myself at times caught up in the details (to the point of myopia).

The effect was like zooming in, and taking a tighter cropping of the image. The subject is in clear focus but the surrounding elements are reduced to a complementary blur.

I kinda like it!

Here’s a quick look, cause pictures speak a thousand words and really, nobody wants to read about things they can just see instead, no?

Real life versus Still.life

DIng ding ding!

Here are the arrangements for the past 3 weeks, followed immediately by my interpretation of it. I have to apologise on the half-done-ness for some of them and the general poor quality of my mobile phone pictures (though it makes my paintings look nicer… hahah!).

March 31: Plant vs fruits #1

March 31: Plant vs fruits #1

April 7: Grapes and wine against a sunflower plate

Apr 14: Plant vs fruits #2

Most of them are still a fair bit from being done, but they are already turning out to be what I see in my mind.

I’m still not very pleased with how my floral and foliage are turning out. Wish I could figure out why! Is it a problem with my colour mixes or just simply my lack of exposure… I’ve done exercises with fruits so I’m pretty confident that I usually can get things right (given the time). But those petals and leaves really trip me up.

Oh well…. I would love to hear comments.

Mar 17: A warm palette of flowers and fruits

Hello oil, I’m back again. *wry smile* Made some decent progress today, which was nice… for a change!

Today’s set up

and my work in progress

Two things struck me as I was painting today.

(1) It really helps to have practise, and
(2) I do not practise enough.

Heh~ the main challenge for  me is being daring in the application of contrasting shades. I seem to find comfort in “regressing to the mean” when it comes to shades. The dark is not dark enough and the light not light enough.Hence everything kinda looks flat. Maybe it’s due to my personality… or just a lack of confidence?

What can I do?? Other than the obvious – practise practise practise…

It makes me wonder though. At what point does one’s personal way of doing become their style? When you paint or draw, do you have a ideal style in mind to mirror, or do you simply do your own thing and say it’s your unique style?

To say that my paintings, as they are now, are in a style of my own would be grossly premature.

As a learner and beginner, not knowing better… I can only be described as learning to ‘talk’. I have a voice but I’m really just babbling nonsense, whilst listening to others and being gently corrected by teachers.

So, till I find my own… I’ll just keep babbling on ~

♥ Thank you friends, for staying with this babbling idiot ♥

Went to Bali and saw …

a lovely piece of charcoal painting.

The piece was hanging in front of a gallery along Ubud’s main street Jalan Monkey Forest and caught my eye immediately.

Citrus Fruit & Root Vegetable Basket in Acrylic

After a long break, it feels nice to be back on the canvas. I thought I’ll experiment with Acrylic again, just to see if I could possibly work with it like I would with oil.

Acrylic is still very new to me. And according to web sources, it is one of the newer mediums used in visual arts, as opposed to oil which is easily centuries old. I wrote in a post some time ago about this medium and my attempts with it. Compared to a year back, my efforts today had me wondering if I have taken several steps backward!

I was having great difficulty in getting the paint to do what I wanted it to do, within the time it dries. It dries too quickly! I found it tough to mix the colour wet and get it to look right when it’s dry.

I’m pretty sure I’m doing something wrong. But I don’t know what yet!

Perhaps just general inexperience?

Still.Life: Citrus Fruit & Root Vegetable Basket

The colours look really muted, which frustrated me somewhat because it looks so much better when the paint was wet.

I started with a light colour wash for the background and sketched the rest using basic colour blocks. Keeping to a triangular composition, I tried to make my painting more balanced.

I was very distracted by the crease on the left of the canvas, and ended up with a lopsided look.  Haha!

… oh well, a centralised triangle would look weird too anyway, right?

The devil was really in the details and I suspect that it was exactly why I did not do very well with the medium.

I can’t exactly blame the colours I got but I think it didn’t help that I was working with cheaper quality paints. My green and yellows fared better than the reds (I didn’t have an out-of-tube orange and had to mix my own) and browns (clumpy dark brown!).

In the end, I couldn’t finish up the painting, having painted over several layers because the previous rendition just was not living up to my expectations.

Thus, for now, I have thrown in the proverbial (acrylic-paint-stained) towel… I guess, for my own good, I should stick with oil till I have gotten a better grasp of the fundamentals, before I move on to Acrylic.

(=.=)’

Anyway, I’m very proud of my dad’s progress in setting up for the Sunday still life sessions and also in his own paintings! It shows that practice makes perfect and that Art is something that, if done regularly, would improve with time.

Jan 27:  Citrus Fruit & Root Vegetable Basket

Well done daddy! ^^