Today I started the second painting in the Mayday Challenge. Firstly I traced the image onto the canvas via a photocopy of the image and a sheet of carbon paper. I could have drawn the image directly onto the canvas, but I wanted it to be as realistic and correct as possible.
In order to maintain the integrity of the image I am masking it with watercolour masking fluid, which seems to work equally well with oils (so far). My aim with this is to have the figure as the focal point, so it is pretty important that it is as realistic as possible.
Yay finally! My beach painting is finished! As you can see there have been a number of changes to my original concept sketch but I think it looks OK. Still not happy with the water, but the addition of the figure really helps the whole composition I think, and she wasn't very difficult to paint either (thank God!). I decided to kill off the kiddies building sandcastles, because I really didn't want to fiddle with three figures.Thank you to everyone who encouraged me to finish the darn thing - I was quite prepared to shove it in a dark cupboard somewhere.
Another update for today. I'm eager to get this one finished and have loosened up a little which feels much better. I hope I get the water all done and dusted tomorrow because franky, I am over it!
I've had a niggling crick in my neck for the last few days which I attributed to either sleeping funny, or to Ju-Jitsu training but after a few hours at the easle yesterday afternoon working on this piece, I could hardly move my neck, so there - I am now officially suffering for my art. Workplace Health and Safety would have a field day in my "studio" I'm sure.
Nevertheless - I have managed to do some more work on this. The clouds have been altered for the third time, and I am finally happy with them. The waves I'm not too fussed on, but I don't know how to make them better, so they will probably stay as they are for now. The foam I'm quite happy with as well, although you can see the rough drawing on the right hand backwash where I intend to extend it futher up the beach.
I have to go into uni this morning to start researching my first lot of assignments which are due at the end of this month (EEK!) but I hope to do some more work on it either this afternoon, or tomorrow,
Another productive day for me. I started to rework this piece after looking at it for the last day or so I could see what needed changing and what didn't sit well with me. Firstly, I cranked up my storm clouds by about 1000000% to make the weather look really ominous. The fact that it is a dark cloudy day today probably helped - it is difficult painting storm clouds when it is bright and sunny outside!
What I want to portray in this piece is the feeling of the children being so engrossed with their sandcastles they don't notice the weather (as is normal for kids). I intend to have the beach part still lit from the bottom left so it looks like it is still sunny in the west, with the storm coming in from the horizon. So far, I am only having trouble with the foam on the receding water, I don't know for the life of me how people can get it to look like foam on water but I will have to just keep trying.
I am starting to actually enjoy doing this piece - I really did think
This is the first stage of my first Mayday challenge painting. I changed the composition from the initial sketch, moving the kids to the right corner for balance and adding the third child who will probably be the focus point.
It looks like rubbish at the moment, and I hope it improves as I work on it. If it dosn't, the practice will do me good. I have put a lot more effort and detail in this first stage than I usually do, but there is still a lot more work to go. It is so much harder than it looks to paint the ocean and I will really need to focus and concentrate with it. And I haven't even started with the kiddies yet! What have I gotten myself in for?!?
Here is the concept sketch for my first Mayday challenge painting. Recently, Mr Kitty and I had a long weekend at Yamba where I took lots of photos of people on the beach with the hope I would have something to paint. The first 2 or 3 challenge paintings will be based on these photos. As mentioned before, I can't paint/draw people realistically at all, and this sketch prooves it lol!
This painting will be based on a number of seperate photos I took, one of an afternoon storm coming over, the tide washing onto the rocks and lastly one of some kids making a sandcastle. My idea for this piece will be two children engrossed in building their sandcastle while an oncoming storm looms ominously on the horizon. I might yet add a third child standing in the water looking toward the others if I can find a good enough photo in my collection to use as a reference.
Now I have the idea down on paper, I will need to do some further sketches of the different components - mainly the childre
Hello all,
This morning I subscribed myself to the Australian Art Forum's Mayday Mayday challenge. Because I can't paint people or water worth a damn, my challenge is to complete 5 paintings that include both people AND water, are realistic in style, (ie no stick figures or blue wavy lines) and must be larger than 14" x 18" by 1st May 2007, only 2 months away! I will be updating this blog regularly with the works in progress. In addition, I hope to have at least one non-landscape painting, but that's not a given.
I will still complete my current work in progress, which does not fit the criteria unfortunately, and start on some concept sketches today, which I will post here as well, just so people know I'm serious and to stop me from piking out ha ha!
