bear necessities

when the urge to draw / paint / create won't go away for months is the most wonderful feeling. i don't know if other artists feel this way but i just can't stand not drawing during these times. the only difficulty is having to ration the urge so that the "juice" wont run out during the last stages of the painting process. this inpired feeling really gives me the drive and patience i need to sit down for hours and paint.

finding the right art materials is half of the fun too when creating art. sometimes new art materials can be an inspiration to create. for this and every painting that i've done so far i usually use five to six pieces of # 3/0 synthetic brush, # 0 & # 2 flat synthetic brushes, flat hog bristle craft brushes and other objects that can bring out the effect i'm looking for in a painting like the hard bristle toothbrush or assorted sponges.

aside from this, i have my glass palette which i kept mentioning in my previous blog posts. in the following picture you can see how i mixed my color for the bear painting. i dont really have a system in placing my mixed oil paint on the pallette unlike some artists i've seen who place their oils in a rainbow like line. i usually clean my glass pallete a few weeks after a painting just incase i need a color chart to retouch parts of the painting. i also have my beloved pallette knife which fits my hand perfectly and has the right size in scoop length to mix my paint.

painting in my usual method, i've decided to skip over the parts where i show pictures on how i painted the sky, salmon and brown bear. the picture below shows how i work in sections on the bear fur. i paced myself setting a four by eight inch canvas space to paint quota per day. you can also see the brown towel i use to rest my arm while painting.

the most difficult part to paint was the water at first i thought i wouldn't be able to depict an accurate painting of the dripping, splashes and rippling of water but i'm glad to have pulled it off.

the final touches were of the water reflections which was a bit like my mama mallard painting. after one and a half months its finally complete ^_^v

forbidden fruit

my first finished painting for the year 2011. yehay! i heard that in some countries raccoons are considered to be pests cause they break into homes and garbages and do all sorts of damage. in the philippines we don't have raccoons running around so we view them as sly and cute critters.

after putting down all the guide details i need. i usually do the color test on the actual painting because i don't like painting the same thing twice. this way the subject becomes more interesting because there will be a lot of colors on the board during this experiment period. the beauty with oils as a medium is that you can never go wrong. if you want to change color just let the part dry and put a new coat of paint on top.

this is my first time to draw apples. i guess i could also pass for a still life fruits painter because friends have commented on how life like the apples are.

painting the leaves one by one by one was really a patience tester. although i had a lot of fun playing around with yellow, green and blue hues. i was careful not to make the leaves in the foreground look lumped together. i wanted them to stand out individually. it took four times longer to paint the foreground leaves than to paint the raccoon and branches combined.

the branches were the last to be painted cause my palette was filled with so many leaf colors. finally finished ^_^

japanese koi

paintings of carp fishes are very common in asia. so i decided this would be my next challenge to paint a subject that's common but in a different light. and this is what i came our with:



a primarily red with black spots and white under belly carp fish said too be prized in japan. i may not be anatomically correct with my spots but this was how i understood it when i was reading articles on japan's nishikigoi (japanese carp or koi) criteria for judging best in show. i think this is what they call a taisho sanke variety. if i'm wrong please correct me.

lionfish

i've always wanted to do things that nobody or only a few have done. that's why for my next painting i've chosen an exotic fish to paint

the beautiful yet venomous lionfish comes in many colors (red, green, navy green, brown, orange, yellow, black, maroon, or white) and they also vary in size. generally they reach a size of 30 cm to 35 cm (12 inches), while smaller lionfish, like the fuzzy dwarf, are typically the size of a tennis ball, not including fins. while in the caribbean where lionfish aren't native, they grow to a size of up to 55 cm.



first i draft the painting in mechanical pencil 0.5 lead so that i can see all the details that i want to include in my painting. then i start with the head because the head identifies species from each other. after this i painted the body of the fish minus the spines. since i'm left handed i started the right side background of sea weeds as well.



i continued on the background of seaweed until the lower left because i mixed too much paint and was in danger of the paint drying up before i could finish all the sea weeds part. mixing another batch of paint is not a good idea because i want all the shades to be uniform.



finnshed painting. 16x20" reeves oil on artist canvas panel.



another look at the painting this time this photo of the painting was taken outside the house under normal daylight.

yorkshire terrier

like all 1st day workshops the instructor will tell you to draw a sphere and put the correct shades on it. next comes the cube then a glass bottle test. to tell you the truth i do badly at these exercises because they're boring. but i understand why these tests are needed. it's for the instructor to measure your drawing abilities and to correct any flaws.

usually the teacher gives you free reign on what u want to draw so i chose a simple drawing just to learn how to use the medium correctly.



cute yorky pup 8.5 x 10 reeves oil paint on canvas board

i started with a set of 12 reeves oil paint and cheap brushes that i can throw away and wont feel bad about it. in the end, i actually enjoyed oil painting and have decided to do more paintings.

during my painting lessosns i've learned that buying cheap brushes and have their hairs come of while painting can be pretty annoying and embarassing as the teacher looks at your painting over your shouder. no more cheap brushes for me!! right now, i'm favoring the synthetic kind from japan.

prior to this workshop i've been experimenting on making animal paintings using pastel in hopes that i might have the talent to be a wild life artist. this is why i chose to do a dog to practice fur drawing on oils.

here are my pastel works on animals:



husky pup 15 x 21 rembrandt pastel on watercolor paper



chillin tiger 15 x 21 rembrandt pastel on watercolor paper