Journal of My Oil Painting Techniques

I sketched some pencil portraits of the people in public today. I haven’t been getting enough drawing practice lately, since I am caught up working on couple of tedious renderings nowadays, so I grabbed my sketchbook and headed out to practice sketching the people I see around.

I think sketching the people moving around is a very good practice to increase your speed of thinking process, because you have to very quickly lay-in the understructure within that brief moment your subject stays still, this is the key. After this understructure is roughly but solidly established, one can keep developing the pencil portraits even if the subjects’ pose have changed or starts to move. Since the subject is moving around, you are forced to study and think three-dimensionally around the forms, as you can no longer just copy what you see.

I was in the train, heading to see my friend at the homeless shelter, and I started sketching the girl across me playing video game. As you can see, I totally messed up on the placement of the hands, it wasn’t really because she was moving but was just my careless mistake, as this was my first sketch, and I havn’t practiced for a while.. But I thought I’d show it so people can maybe learn from my mistake, and I still do like the face. It would’ve been nice if I had nailed the hands though.. but it’s just a sketch anyways.


This is when I was standing in line at the homeless shelter to get some free lunch. The lunch was very good, and they gave plenty of seconds as well. The people in line was moving around a bit TOO much so I decided not to work much on them but left as indications.

These were people in the TV room.

Later I went to the library and sketched this computer lady. She had a very interesting and fun features to draw.

Here is a sketch of a girl seated next to me at the computers.

Then I went outside to the yard and sketched this guy with his dog

Man smoking at the yard.

It was a good day sketching the pencil portraits.

Britt came today for me to continue with this nude art painting of her.

Since I pretty much have everything laid in with this piece, it is now all about rendering, polishing, and detailing things. It is the most slowest and time-consuming of the process but also the least difficult as everything have been figured out already and all there is left to do is just tightening things up.

I worked on defining the hands and feet some more, adding more details and forms. I also indicated the positions of the tattoos on her feet, but have not started defining them yet. I am planning to really define the tattoos clearly as well.

I also worked on the hands, especially her right hand. I did not detail it out but just indicated the general formations of it for now.

I added some more details on her face and modeled the forms of her cheek area. I extended the corner of her mouth because it was a bit short before. I modeled the forms of the hair as well. There are a lot more work to be done with her head and the face. I am planning on making this piece as tight and realistic as possible if the time allows me.

Foremost challenge of this nude art painting is working through the inconsistent lighting situation. My studio does not have acces to the natural northern light so the lighting changes a lot as I work. I still have not quite figured out how to best work under such situations but I am doing my best to make good judgements on whether to change the painting as the lighting changes, or keep things the way they are. Also Britt looking slightly different each time, her flesh tones, hair, etc., has been a bit of a challenge as well.

The outside edges looks a bit cut out to me as of now, and it will probably be the first thing I will work on on the next session. Edges usually takes a long time to define and bit tedious as well, but they can make a huge difference to the nude art painting.

The focus of this piece should definitely be the face and I will spend most of my time on that. I always find myself working mostly on the face, especially the eyes. There are too many things going on in there that draws my attention and really motivates me to capture as much as I can see.

Nude art is definitely my favorite subject to paint. I don’t think there is anything as beautiful and complex as the human figure, its unusual shapes, curves, textures, details all happening throughout the body.