My Artwork

[livingoutofthinair]

Would love to hear about my work... I have been painting with Acrylic for about a year and half now.. I pretty much self taught myself to paint and every new york I have made a little more improvements.


Thank you for looking.

[TinyBird]

In the first image, I actually like the half-finished version much more than the final product. To me the contrasts in value and colours of the unfinished, though not exactly great looking, convey clearer form and looks more interesting that the final where you've blurred most of the edges, made the pic almost monochromatic and made the pillow shadows look like outlines that don't mesh with the figure and flatten the image (since the outlines bring the pillows more to the level of the similar lines, which are the woman's hair). I guess this is one of those cases where trying to copy a photo creates a worse end product and I have a feeling this issue is also present in your other images. So you do any painting from real life, like object studies, landscapes and so on?

Overall lighting/showing form and shadow colours (like all the shadows are just bit darker version of the base colour that doesn't work with any of the other things, like the purple shadows are in the white cloth but none of that same colour isn't in the woman's shadow, making them look like they're separate elements and not two objects in the same scene as neither the colour and lightsource look consistent) as well as the kinda... shoddy finish of the painting are things that I'd point out the most.

[JeffX99]

Need to work more on basic drawing fundamentals before getting into painting. I would check out "Drawing Essentials" by Deborah Rockman as a pretty good place to start.

[livingoutofthinair]

Thank you both! I have basically self taught myself how to paint and draw... never did any art classes... but i will take your advise and see how well it can improve my other paintings.

[arenhaus]

Nice progress for a year and a half.

I would suggest to practice fundamentals as well. You can incorporate these studies into your painting as you go. For example, use a portrait to practice reading facial planes, or a building to train perspective - and everything to study lighting.

Recommended reading: "Creative Illustration" by Loomis, "Figure Drawing for All It's Worth" by same, "Brushwork Essentials" by Weber, and an artist's handbook of some kind.

[livingoutofthinair]

Thank you... will def look into those.