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I'm going to show @amyhoy the most basic process of oil painting using this photo she posted yesterday. This photo is great because it has really strong dark and light, and isn't too colorful so you can use a limited palette of colors.pic.twitter.com/Miwhd4BhnM
All creative activities have a process. Either you know what that process is and you can review it and improve it. Or, you don't know what that process is and you fail with no idea why. The catch is, what you *think* your process is usually is just a fantasy of false memory.
In the beginning, you don't have a process, so just pick any process that is easy. This process of doing an oil painting is based on me *actually* filming myself paint hundreds of times and then analyzing what worked and didn't *when painting small direct strong paintings*.
The overall guide to this process is this: 1. Go from loose, simple, and general to complex in stages. 2. Guess to get closer at each stage, but don't agonize over it. 3. The next stage in the process can fix or keep anything you've done previously. 4. Evaluate only at the end.
1. Go from loose and simple to... Just a quick drawing to figure out where I want things. This is a small 8x10 so I adjust the drawing to make the cactus bigger and in a better spot. It's loose, and there's like 4 big shapes: sky, cacti, light rocks, dark bottom.pic.twitter.com/MqFZQNSOeR
2. Guess to get close: Notice how it's not even close to perfect? Haha! Who cares, it's a guess, a study of where it could be, with the drawing more of notes than of exactly where everything is because...pic.twitter.com/AKXH3Y3fHw
3. The next stage in the process can fix or keep anything you've done previously. I look at this and then think about my next stage. What color is each big shape going to be? Is this close enough or should I change something? Can I change it in the next stage or now?pic.twitter.com/y2Keaxn6c7
4. Evaluate at the end. All creative activities have an "ugly middle part", where you'll think it's going to be a disaster but if you just keep working the process it'll come out better than you think. I evaluate this after I draw it, but I commit to finishing the whole thing.
Next stage in the process: The block-in of basic colors. Here's the colors I came up with while doing the block-in. You can also just mix the colors in one stage, then paint them in. Can you identify what color goes where? Also notice I'm using 1 red, 1 blue, and 2 yellows.pic.twitter.com/VNd9EbZPKH
Why two yellows? I can do the whole painting with that 1 bright yellow, 1 red, and 1 blue, but I'm lazy this morning and added Yellow Ochre because those rocks are basically yellow ochre and it saves time. Yellow ochre is the brownish yellow on the bottom left.
1. Go from loose and simple.... I now paint in the color of these simple shapes, focusing on the *value* of each and its simple color. Value is how dark or light it is, and you can take a photo and convert it to B&W to see that.pic.twitter.com/dfmY57LQDE
2. Guess to get closer... The paint just mostly matches the drawing, so "guess" in this case is the color. I'm not agonizing over exactly matching the sky and rocks etc. I'm just trying to get close and focusing more on the value.pic.twitter.com/vGIyqtB9GI
3. The next stage can fix or keep... Focusing again on color and value, do I want to keep the shadows this dark? I do like the drama, but *maybe* I should make the lit rocks and sky darker so the cactus can be more colorful. Usually it's good to...pic.twitter.com/24xTNBc43K
... make your darks a little too dark and your lights a little too light in this style of alla prima painting. I'm going to go back *into* these giant shapes and refine them with slightly different paint. Doing that will darken the lighter shapes and lighten the darker ones.
4. Evaluate only at the end. I'm done painting in the shapes, so then I can evaluate whether it's working and what I might need to change. At this point if it's totally not going to work going forward I'll scrape that shape off with a palette knife. BUT, you can't stop!
This is important because there's two evaluations you'll have to do: 1. Is it technically working for the next stage? That's just simply did you put the paint on right, can you work with it, are the values good enough, etc. 2. Is it a good piece of art? You have no idea!
Trying to evaluate the artistic merits of an work in progress is kind of like determining a tiny child will be a criminal before they're 18. You just can't, and you have to give it a chance to grow before you see if it's garbage and throw it ....uhhh bad analogy but you get it.
Now I a take a break and go do work with more to come. The next step is to refine each of the big shapes to improve their drawing, how the connect to other shapes, and fine them with simple shapes internally. It's kind of a breadth first search? Divide and conquer?
My internet at home was down all day so I finished off this painting process. Once you have the initial block-in, you next start to refine each big shape with 2-3 inner shapes. Here's me starting with the sky, and the shadow. It's subtle, but the 2nd pic here is the previous.pic.twitter.com/XqyloHz6hW
Next repeat the process of refining inside the light rocks shapes, and fixing a bit of drawing here and there, and alter the cactus some. All is done inside the initial shapes, but moving them around here and there as needed.pic.twitter.com/q2PbgekFV9
We now enter the "Terrible Middle Stage", where everything looks bad because it loses the strength of the first statement block-in, but doesn't have any of the refinement of the final painting. I've altered the inner shapes to 2-3 so now in this one I start refining more.pic.twitter.com/DiKP1FKapB
During this I'm following the whole process, of finding a shape, studying it, figuring out the inner shapes, and slowly improving them. The key with this impressionist style is you don't try to do any exact details until the very end, and then you just do a few.pic.twitter.com/dzzyiYh7z4
Now...this photo is kind of terrible because of lighting, but you see how I'm adding smaller and smaller details and altering shapes, but still not tiny things like twigs or the exact tiny little shapes of rock clusters, still simple, just now has some texture in the clouds,etc.pic.twitter.com/OLROx4mvPE
I'm close to the end, and I can start adding in a bit of details here and there, just enough to make people think they see something. I don't paint every little twig in the shadow, just a few so it tricks you into seeing it like a bush. I also just removed that left cactus.pic.twitter.com/JgZGbEruJP
You may look at this and think "HUGE JUMP!" between these two, but it's not *really* a big jump. I'm not completely repainting all the shapes to make them more complex. I'm just noticing a detail on a shape, then layering it on delicately with a softer touch.pic.twitter.com/kVnJdg6bN4
Now I could stop at that, but the final thing to do is adjust the edges of the shapes to change focus, depth, field of vision, and focal plane. For example, clouds far away won't be focused or hard. Bushes on the top need to be out of focus. I just use a super soft clean brush.pic.twitter.com/rqZ1gNUrGP
Once I'm done I can look at it as a study and think how to do it different: 1. The cactus is dumb, too straight. 2. Sky too literal blue, looked better without the clouds. 3. Rocks are great, shadow is good, plants on the top aren't defined enough. 4. Sky too light?pic.twitter.com/xiNAtp1tZE
Final thing to remember is that accuracy is more a function of time and tricks than skill. If you see those photo realistic paintings that person spent 60+ hours on them and used photos the whole time, with many many layers. If it looks more like a painting, then less time.
This little study is about...45 minutes maybe an hour of time spread out over 5-10 minute breaks during the day. To make it very realistic I'd potentially take this little study, the original photo, adjust it on a computer, trace it, and do about 10 layers to get it closer.
And I honestly don't have time for that. I'd rather stop there and get back to my day job than labor for 60+ hours just so something looks exactly like a photo. My ADHD literally won't let me anyway.
Alright, maybe I'll do another one of these next week. And I'll use a real camera for better photos. Twitter demolishes these and they're already pretty bad.
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