I just got back from a 3 week European vacation a week ago and I saw a ton of insane art over there that had me riled up to paint and draw and stuff. Then to top things off I spent a long time looking at Danse-Macabre.net which has SO many crazy works of art. The stained glass on the first page is one of the craziest things I have ever seen, especially given it’s age and the medium! Then after looking at a couple of Hans Memling’s pieces I instantly really wanted to do a skull in an alcove Memento Mori / Vanitas sort of thing. I’ve actually never painted a skull so that’s one reason I wanted to do it. I was also thinking it would be relatively easy and I think I could do a pretty good job on it, especially if I do it in monochrome. So I spent a few hours over a couple days planning and drawing directly onto an 11 x 14 inch wood panel and then started painting today. I spent about 2 1/2 hours today on this and am super excited about it.

I actually realized recently that it’s been about 6 months since I’ve painted! Yipes, that’s not how one gets better. I did do some drawing over the past months and I need more work on my drawing skills at this point anyway. In any case, I’m very excited about this project and have really been enjoying working on it, which wasn’t the case for a few recent projects

Oh the cherub at the top is grey because the pencil didn’t get locked in very well with my base coat of acrylic which was supposed to wash away the pencil too and prevent it from muddying up the oil paint, oh well. Later it should get covered by the raw umber I am using so it fits with the rest of the painting. That cherub was inspired by something I saw in Venice…I wanted to give a little glimmer of hope to the painting.

Categories: oil painting, work-in-progress by Airn
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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
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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
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Whoa, I haven’t posted anything in months? Oh dang, OK then look at this, it’s almost done.16×20 inches, oil on canvas…not sure what it’s called yet but I refer to it as “Graveyard Boody” in my notes, of which I have 19 8×11 inch pages now, since I have been working on this junk for a year and a month, off and on.I just painted over the face today and will be putting in a new face in a couple days, based on a sketch I did yesterday. I have painted over the face and body many, many times over the past months and have really learned a lot.

Categories: oil painting, surreal, work-in-progress by Airn
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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 by Airn
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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
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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
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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 by Airn
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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
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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
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