OK, I finished this a while ago but didn’t post it partly cuz I have been planning for a big Europe trip which I just came back from. I got to see lots of amazing art and scenery and stuff and am now fully inspired and ready to start on some new projects

I wanted this one to be a fairly quick project and I succeeded in that respect, this took me only about 12 hours to paint – that’s very short for me. It’s 11 x 14 inches, oil on canvas. I call it “A Country girl near the Dream City”:

A Country Girl near the Dream City

A main goal was to use some atmospheric perspective in the landscape background and to use canvas instead of wood panel to try to get a nice soft feel, especially in the background. I am really happy with the way the landscape turned out and also had fun with the hair, which I did a bit differently this time. Some influences on this one were Tamara de Lempicka, Albrecht Dürer, and Leonardo da Vinci.

I used cobalt blue in the sky, landscape, and clothing. The landscape is mostly yellow ochre and other yellows plus cobalt blue.

I’m not sure how long I spent on the drawing and planning but I started painting on  March 2, 2011 and was done on April 3. I had a show I wanted this to be in so I didn’t putz around – it’s funny how much faster and smarter I work when I have a deadline. Looking back over my notes I had a good time painting this and it went very smoothly with minimal frustration – very nice after a couple recent projects that I kept changing over and over.

Here is the drawing:

Country Girl drawing

After I completed the drawing I xeroxed it in order to preserve the original and rubbed graphite on the back of the copy. I then taped it to the canvas and went over it with a ballpoint pen to transfer the lines onto the canvas. I then went over those faint lines with a fine sepia sharpie and put a thin wash of transparent olive-green (black combined with yellow) acrylic to wash away the graphite and lock everything into place. I then painted everything directly with oils, no glazing or monochromatic underpainting on this one.

Transferring the drawing to canvas

Categories: completed, dream city, oil painting, portrait, surreal, technique by Airn
No Comments »

This is my finished painting “Duplicitous Dionara and Devious Diandra”. It is 11 x 14 inches, oil on wood panel.

Duplicitous Dionara and Devious Diandra

Duplicitous Dionara and Devious Diandra (detail)

For this one I used a monochromatic underpainting / dead layer which I later glazed over in color. Here are the work-in-progress posts I did which include some photos of the dead layer: Duplicitous WIP posts

I spent about 30 hours painting this over about 8 months. I’m not sure how much time I spent doing studies and planning but I would guess 10-15 hours. That’s more than I usually spend planning…it helped me to avoid having to change stuff in the middle of the project.

Overall I spent the most time on the hair. When I first started this project it was supposed to be a quick one…I ended up making the hair complicated though and spent a rather long time on the faces too, so the project ended up being much longer and more complicated than I had expected.

Here are the main oil colors I used for this painting:

Underpainting of flesh areas: Raw umber and titanium white

Flesh tones – glazed and opaque color: Yellow ochre, cadmium red hue, titanium white, raw umber, burnt umber

Dress: Titanium white, phthalo blue, raw umber

Here are a some of the preparatory drawings I did for the hair and dress as well as a detail of the main drawing:

Hair studies for Duplicitous

Dress studies for Duplicitous

"Duplicitous" sketch

I don’t look on the studies as being just useful for this painting since they help me increase my drawing skills in general. On the hair I also wanted to learn how to do ringlets and curls better and I’m sure I will use that style in other works.

Categories: completed, dead layer, oil painting, portrait, surreal by Airn
1 Comment »

This painting is moving along quickly, which is good because I am trying to finish it by next week if possible…in time for my art show. I don’t want to rush it though, so I might decide it’s not gunna happen. Hmm….

Oil on canvas, 11×14 inches.

Categories: dream city, oil painting, portrait, surreal, work-in-progress by Airn
No Comments »

Here’s a detail of a new painting I am working on. Right now I am calling it “Dream City Girl 2″ since it’s kinda like my Graveyard Girl from the Dream City painting.

It’s 11 x 14 inches, oil on canvas and I’m hoping to finish it within a couple weeks – a super-fast project for me, since most usually end up taking several months.

Categories: dream city, oil painting, portrait, surreal, work-in-progress by Airn
No Comments »

I finished this painting a while ago but apparently I forgot to post anything about it

This is a friend of mine; I took some pictures in a makeshift studio AKA my living room and used one as a basis for this painting. It’s oil on panel, 8×10 inches and I finished it in a few hour-long sessions.

Portrait of Sarah by Airn LeBus

Categories: completed, oil painting, portrait by Airn
No Comments »

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 by Airn
No Comments »

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 by Airn
1 Comment »

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 by Airn
No Comments »

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 by Airn
No Comments »

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 by Airn
No Comments »