Journal of My Oil Painting Techniques

Michelle has not come back since the last post, but I used the opportunity to start working on other areas of the painting, such as the easel and the background.

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I first started to fill in some colors for the background, then focused on rendering the easel afterwards. The bar of the easel was full of paint daubs and stains, so I had to eventually use the tiny brush to get the details in. It was a bit tedious and boring as it was progressing rather slowly. US Open tennis was on TV so I watched it while painting the details.

Despite the careless handling, I am happy with how it’s looking. I like the many variety of intense colors being introduced all within an area.

Hopefully Michelle will come back for this painting soon so I can start bringing her to color as well.

I worked a lot more on this oil painting with Michelle yesterday and today.

When Michelle sat yesterday, I started out working mostly on the face, still using only hte monochrome burnt umber, trying to draw in the most accurate lay-in as possible with my naked eye. I noticed a lot of things looked different from the first sitting, so I had to decide whether to change it or keep things the way they were, but I chose to make some changes as things generally looked better than before.

After working hard on establishing the correct portrait, I proceeded onto developing the figure. I noticed the pose was different than last time, as it was more slanted and angular, which seemed more appealing, so i didn’t hesitate to make the correction. It was a drastic change, but my goal is to create the best pose as possible despite the extra hard work of going through series of tedious alterations.

After I have worked on the monochrome lay-in to the point where I felt comfortable and solid, I began to gradually introduce the colors, starting with the face.

I also worked on the painting on the easel, keeping it loose and impressionistic to compliment with the realistic background.