So I did several things different for this painting beside painting something different.
I setup the WordPress app on my iphone so I could dictate some notes while I paint. Unfortunately, my painting and note taking was interrupted with daily stuff, but no big deal.
I will be glad when I get new and better paints besides these Winson paints. It is taking me a long time to set up because I have to mix liquin into every color I use to make them less stiff. Of course I only have seven colors on my palette, but it would be nice to get into direct painting faster.
I started this painting a bit differently by doing a very quick block and outline of the still life. Then after having a general area of where the castle was placed, I put in a basic background color of the castle itself after that I began drawing exactly and measuring the castle. I have to say this change didn’t help one bit. I was thinking that the background color would fill in a lot of medium values throughout the castle that I wouldn’t have to deal with while painting, but it wasn’t like that at all. At no point during this painting did I fill like I had control of it. It is my worst yet, but this is GREAT! I have no where to go but up, how can we know success without failure?
So, the drawing here is just bad and after 5 paintings it is clear that drawing with the brush is my weak point. I need to do some paintings that focus just on drawing, or just do a bunch of drawings to get my draftsman abilities up to where they should be.
I mainly changed the still life to test a theory I had from the last painting. The theory that objects with more facets are easier to draw and paint then objects with flowing lines. What I found out was much more rewarding. I discovered a great weakness in my abilities, drawing.
Next painting I may do nothing but focus on drawing. The whole painting for however long it takes just get the drawing perfect. I could just pull out a board and pencils and draw the castle but drawing with a pencil and drawing with a brush are two different beasts. I feel its much harder to draw with a brush so I would like to work on that skill as well as my drawing at the same time.
Even though this painting is terrible, again my values are just about spot on. I feel really happy that I can get them that close, I’m even pretty happy with the color.
I focused a bit on edges here, its not hard to determine the hardest and softest edges. The hard part is softening edges where two completely different values of paint are right next to each other.
I kept the composition simple and didn’t focus on it at all. The only thing I wanted to do was keep the entire figure in the painting.
Not much of a focus on color here. I just recognized which areas were warm and which were cool and tried to keep them somewhat true.
