So I have a confession: I haven’t been painting very long. Most of my experience is in drawing with graphite and colored pencil. I’ve been painting for maybe a year and a half and I’ve taken a couple painting classes. What this means, ultimately, is that it still takes me a long time to finish a piece because I don’t always know what I’m doing.
And that’s ok. It all comes with time. I’m already good for my current level of experience, with time it will turn into great.
Anyway, let’s start with one of my first pieces. When I say “first”, I mean paintings I’ve started since I moved my studio about a year ago.
This is the 2nd painting I started since getting serious about painting. It still needs work, more detail on the moon… Honestly, I’m trying to adopt a “just get it done” mentality to combat my perfectionism. Perhaps it’s not my greatest painting, but it’s still good, and since I’ve been working on it so long, I just want to get it finished. As I said in my last post, oil paintings take a long time to dry. After this layer dries, I just need a few more details.
This painting? I keep wanting to call it finished… The only thing it still needs is perhaps some detail on the weed plants. The most challenging thing for me right now is smooth lines. It’s getting the right combination of pigment and linseed oil in order to form something solid. If anything, I might want to add a few details but it is pretty much done.
This is a painting I started at the Ganja Goddess Convention. It has a long way to go. The flowers are based from real life rather than a photo, but of course I just started them. I used acrylic paint for the first and second layer, now I’m using oil on top.
When you start learning the human figure, you draw people nude. I continued to draw women as I questioned my sexuality and strived to be thin.
This is the 1st painting I started since my new studio, so I’m definitely ready to call it done! I added more color to the hair because something felt lacking. I lightened up the background… I’m deciding whether I’m satisfied with it, I think I might be. As I said, I need to have the mentality of just getting it done… That one breast is larger than the other, I’ve noticed, but that’s realistic, honestly. Nobody’s body is perfectly symmetrical.
This one has a ways to go… It’s drawn and painted from real life. The reason it isn’t as realistic as, say, my Buddha painting, which I should probably also show you… Is that I started drawing it in one lighting, but then I’m using slightly different lighting to paint it, as well as a different mirror. Therefore, it’s not gonna be super realistic, a lot of it has to come from my head. That means it’s gonna be more cartoon-y. That’s ok though! Lesson learned, and I get practice with improvising.
This is my newest painting. It is so much easier to get in detail and it pops out so much more when you work bigger, so I want to do that as much as I can now. Maybe it’s easier but it also allows for expansion. I’ve realized my favorite artists do such amazing work because they work big!
Anyway, I had to adjust the nose, I realized the proportions were a little off… I’m debating whether to keep those large circles under my eyes because it certainly says something about me… I know it looks good, but it’s gonna look even better once I get all the detail in there. It needs to dry though first before the next layer… I’m still not sure what to put in the background.
I’d like to start posting these blog posts earlier in the day for a wider audience, but, you know. I’m a night owl so for now this works… Anyway, thanks for reading… I’ll just show you the Buddha painting tomorrow… The next couple of days will be art days, too, so you’ll be seeing more soon!
Harley Makes Art 