a beautiful cock almost finished

It took many many hours to get this result.
On the first photo you see the underlayers of umber and white.
On the second photo I added color, also many layers building up depth.
Still not yet finished, the white feathers need another layer and tweaking. You still can see the underlayer of umber and white shining through. The rest of the animal is ready (I think) :-)

old master oilpainting still life finished, overview of all the stages

Finally I finished a still life. 20x30cm.
It took a long time to paint this in the style of the old masters.
Monique Eysink, my very skillfull and patient teacher have learned me a lot about the proces of fine art painting.

This is the result of 30 lessons I had for 1 year and Oh boy! I learned so much in this year.
Often I had the feeling that it was too difficult to master this old master technique.
And I still have so much to learn about colour and putting layers of (transparant) colour on top of each other.
I will concentrate on that for the next year.

But for the first time I feel I finally can paint!
Not smearing oilpaint on the surface but handling the oilpaint and the brushes the right way.
I started already 2 other paintings, look at my next posts and I start another one tomorrow at my last lesson of the season.
Thanks very much!!! Monique Eysink. Till after the summer holidays. I already look forward to it.

hydreanga finished, very colorfull

In finished the little painting of a hydreanga flower. 15x20cm
What a joy to paint all those tiny flowers.
Very difficult to take photographs. The layers of colors are so subtle and the underground is shining through.

I learned so much from painting this subject.
To see and paint all the different shapes and the many many tones.

first stage underlayer finished

Last night I finished the first layer of the underlayer. Now I will let it dry. I did try to make the form of the citron round and I will add details to the body of the citron in the next layer. This is the first time I work this way. I have to wait 2,5 weeks till my next lesson.

first step of classical realistism painting

I really enjoy painting this!! Not easy though. It is my first attempt in using this technique.
This is a real Work in Progress. This is the first layer of the underpainting in raw umber and titanium white.
 I am working at the slice of the zitron and starting to paint the dark background.
Untill now, I think I painted for 12 to 14 hours. Long way to go.

New adventure: oilpainting course fine art, classical realism

At last I found someone who teaches classical realism and........... she lives nearby. What a treat. Her name is Monique Eysink.
For the last couple of years, I took several online courses but I miss personal contact.
Next thursday, 2th of October 2014, is the first real lesson.
So I started to search for suitable subjects. Not easy to do, there are so many beautiful licence free photos on the internet. But it will be my first painting so the subject must not be too difficult to start with.

I downloaded several photos and I think I found the one I will use.
A citron, sliced.
Then I made a beautiful print of the photo to paint from, in the size of the painting. I do not want to start too small but also not too big, so I choose A4 size, 20x30cm.

Then I made a linedrawing to transfer to the piece MDF. I covered the MDF with a medium Grey colour several times.

With the help of my computer I made a image with 7 tones and painted a little study in a smaller size on a piece of MDF to practise these grey tones.

And last, today I took the photo of the citron and took from a lot of places colorswaps to see what colours are present on the photo.

What I always do with painting bontanical subjects with watercolor is to make studypages with colorsamples and I will do the same with these photos. So I will make a page with colorsamples with watercolor.

I already made 7 pages with all the colors of oilpaint I own. I glued on each page 7 pieces with 1vwhite and 5 different grades of grey  and painted on them with each oil paint color.
So I can see what the different colors do when they are painted over these greys.
Are they transparant, or opaque. Does the color change by the underpainting.
For the classical realism it is important to know if the color is transparant or opaque because colors are glazed over a grey toned underlayer.
These pages are with the colors red, blue and yellow. I did the same with all the other colors.