Cross

After 26 hours spread over 13 sessions I have finished this painting. This may be the best figure painting I’ve ever done, so far.

I’m so close to being finished with this painting, I’m almost positive that I will finish it on my next session with it.

Today marks my 4 year anniversary of doing art daily. So for this big milestone in my life I’m going to look back and see how I’ve grown as an artist.

I didn’t get a lot of painting done on the figure today because I focused for the first hour on color tests.

It was only after I finished today’s painting session and I looked at the photos did I notice that I have a color matching problem on this painting.

There was a time when I found it hard to paint for only 30 minutes a day. Now I commit to 2 hours every day and time flies.

I spent the whole 2 hours session this morning painting a hand. I guess it doesn’t need saying but I’m really taking my time with this figure painting.

The current model that I’m painting is very thin and provides a great opportunity for studying anatomy while painting.

Im working slowly now, I’ve got my focus back and I’m sensitive to the subtle changes in the figure.

I’ve written about focus many times here and I feel it is most necessary when painting. Unfortunately for today’s session I could only achieve an unfocused block-in.

I just worked on refining the head and neck trying to think about the skull and muscles.

I get so caught up in trying to match value, color, drawing and edges that I forget that I should be also thinking about structure.

Today is another beginning to a new figure painting in oil and I’m still trying to iterate the process and improve.