Living Room: Finished and Drawing Fundamentals

I’ve finished my Living Room painting and I’m very happy with how it turned out, now it is time to work on the fundamentals.

This was the 50th session on this painting. I think I’ve spent somewhere around 48 hours on the painting. I think this is the longest that I’ve ever spent on a painting. It would have taken less sessions if I spent more than an hour each day working on it, but motivation is organic and I know one day I’ll be back to multiple hours a day.

I get a lot of compliments on this painting which is great, especially when the photographs of the painting are not near as good a the original in my opinion. I think I captured a sense of depth in the painting there is a definite separation between the front, mid and background layers. I do wish I could have captured more atmosphere and maybe departed from the photo a bit more though. Also the clothing piled in the foreground lack a lot of structure. But I love everything in the background and my self portrait, I worked hard on capturing all the different textures and I think I have achieved that.

Now I’m on to the next thing. I think it is time to work on the fundamentals again. If there is one piece of advice that I hear from many different artists is to always get back to the fundamentals of drawing and keep those skills sharp. Drawing accuracy is something that always needs to be worked on, it’s not like riding a bike, you loose the capacity if you’re not constantly refreshing it.

So I’ve decided to create my own curriculum based on some atelier programs out there. I haven’t written it all out yet but while I do I’ve already started on drawing from the figure again today.