I don’t have a title for this one yet. I have been working on it for many months…it’s an original work in oil on a 16×20 canvas. I have a lot of stuff I need to fix or add to, including details on most of it, but here’s what I have so far:

Graveyard work in prog 07-19-2010

The sky is pretty much the only thing that is complete at this point but the overall idea of the painting is going to stay the same, I just need to finish up a lot of stuff and make some stuff darker, etc etc.

Categories: lovecraft, oil painting, work-in-progress // Add Comment »

Share this post »

It’s been a few painting sessions since my last post on this…since then I have started glazing transparent color over the “dead layer” underpainting of the faces and done more work on the hair:

Duplicitous work in progress (detail)

No part of this is quite finished yet, but the hair ringlets and faces probably only need another session or two. I might add ribbons to the hair and dress and am debating what else to do on the dress, I don’t like the way it looks right now. I’m also going to put something in the background; I will probably paint a traditional-looking wallpaper pattern.

I’m happy about the glazing, it works very well over the dead layer and is surprisingly quick to do, like an hour or less was spent on each face adding color. In the same and subsequent sessions I also add opaque highlights, clean up lines, darken shadows, slightly alter features and fix any issues I notice, etc.

Categories: dead layer, oil painting, portrait, work-in-progress // Add Comment »

Share this post »

Did a lot of research and planning for the clothing on this one, this is after the second session on the dress:

Duplicitous - work in prog 2

I’ve found it really difficult to get hi-res photos of the kind of dress I want, to help me figure out how to paint it…I went to a local costume store and they wouldn’t let me take a couple pix so I kept scouring the internet. I collected about 30 photos of dresses and thought I would try to use ideas from a few for my painting. I picked a couple main ones I thought I could learn from and drew them, trying to figure stuff out and build my “drapery vocabulary”. After I felt a little more comfortable with the way the fabric might fold and bunch up and how the light should look on it, I tried a full-size study that I would use later with my painting…I just used a 4B pencil. The best ref I had was at an angle so I imagined what it might look like from the front, etc. I had some scraps of fabric I bought but I didn’t find them too useful for this. After doing a lot of this I felt a bit of an epiphany this morning and really felt like I was “getting it”, quite a nice feeling after a lot of minor frustration.

Probably will put a big ribbon on the dress and maybe some lace…then I need to glaze color over the faces and finish the hair, maybe change the blue background, etc…still have a while on this one. And I thought it would be a quick project, ha!

Some of the studies I did

While workin'

Categories: drawings, oil painting, portrait, surreal, work-in-progress // 1 Comment »

Share this post »

Everyone gets a scone! This is watercolor and pen on watercolor paper, 5×7 inches.

Witchy Scone Scone

I have at least one more little watercolor drawing in the works, will post it when done. I also want to do more stuff with witches…witches, medusa, sphinxes, and Egyptian stuff!

P.S. This is pretty much the first thing I have done with a figure in it, so I’m pretty excited about that.

Categories: completed, drawings, halloween, lovecraft // Add Comment »

Share this post »

Besides the oil paintings I have in progress and lotsa sketching and learning to draw stuffs, especially figures, I’m working on a couple little watercolor and ink things…here is one of them

Witchy Scone Scone

Categories: drawings, lovecraft, work-in-progress // Add Comment »

Share this post »

I just recently started messing with Conté crayons and tried drawing this Leonardo piece a few times. This one is 8 x 10 inches, conté crayons on lightly textured paper:

The Virgin Mary in conte crayons, after Leonardo da Vinci

I like using Conté! It’s not as messy as I first thought, and I think it’s really well-suited to these classical-style drawings. Being able to add highlights is important to me, and is something that I miss when drawing with pencil. I also like being able to blend with my fingers and re-work areas many times. On the drawing above I toned the paper first with sanguine Conté and blended it with a paper towel.I’ve found that I need to work in a larger scale than I normally do, and that the paper texture really matters. I definitely plan on doing a lot more with these and am happy I have a new medium to play around with

Categories: completed, drawings, master study, portrait // Add Comment »

Share this post »

Here is another recent small drawing that I did…this is silent-era actress Zoe Rae.

It’s normal graphite pencil and Col-erase colored pencil on blue paper, about  2 x 2 inches.

Zoe Rae drawing

Categories: completed, drawings // Add Comment »

Share this post »

One of the paintings I am currently working on is below…it’s tentatively called “Duplicitous Diandra and Devious Deirdre”. I’m working with oil on panel and doing a dead layer underpainting for this. I’m definitely having some flashbacks to my Petrus Christus master study and have also been trying to channel some Hans Holbein the Younger as well

Here’s what I have so far (detail):

"Duplicitous" work in prog April 11 2010

This is the drawing I did for this, which I transferred onto the panel:

"Duplicitous" sketch

Categories: dead layer, drawings, oil painting, portrait, work-in-progress // Add Comment »

Share this post »

I’ve been drawing a lot over the past few months, but although I upload a lot of it to Facebook I haven’t put much on here. Here’s a couple things I think are cool-looking.

I did a lot of studies of hair ringlets, mostly for a new painting I am working on but also ’cause they are cool and interesting to draw:

Studies of hair ringlets

I recently bought some books on figure drawing and anatomy for artists and have been working on learning some stuff…these are based on drawings by Joseph Sheppard in his book “Anatomy: A Complete Guide for Artists”:

Anatomy drawings, after Joseph Sheppard

I’ve been experimenting with drawing on toned paper (mostly blue) and using normal HB graphite pencils plus white colored pencils…pretty fun and I like the way it looks especially with the white on the blue. Hard to take photos of though.

Here is something I did based on a painting by Jan van Eyck, again using the blue and white technique:

Van Eyck drapery

Categories: drawings, portrait, work-in-progress // Add Comment »

Share this post »

Phew, I have finally finished my version of a Jean-Baptiste Greuze painting, “The White Hat”. I started this way back in June of 2009, and finished it in late February 2010. This is oil on canvas.

The White Hat - after Greuze, by Airn LeBus. Oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches, 2010.

The White Hat - after Greuze (detail)

I’m not sure if there was an issue with my original drawing or if something happened whilst painting, but I started to realize the facial features were really out of place and spent the last several sessions altering and moving things around, even completely painting over an eye that had been nearly finished. It was difficult but I’m glad I changed it because it looks much better now.

I used a direct technique, no underpainting…the paint is pretty thin, and very matte/non-glossy at this point (I might oil it out and/or varnish it later). If I were to do another painting in this vein, I might try painting more thickly, and with more contrast between the darks and lights. I do like the soft feel this has though, I think it works with the subject matter and color scheme.

I had some difficulties with the source photo I used, it seemed inaccurate contrast-wise and was missing a lot of detail that I had to try and “make up” or guess. The hat and clothing and stuff was also kind of difficult to figure out from the photo, and I tried to do my own version of some of it but really at my skill level should have probably just stuck to what Greuze had done. In any case I am happy with the overall results and definitely learned a lot and have a nice painting to hang on my wall.

The total time I spent on painting only was about 24 hours, usually in 1.5-hour sessions. In addition to that there was the drawing, preparing the canvas, transferring the drawing, and stuff like trying to figure out how to fix the features when they were awry (which took a pretty good chunk of time).

Categories: completed, master study, oil painting, portrait // Add Comment »

Share this post »