Finished painting plus sneak peak of a new one--update 7-3-10

[RandAlThor]

Hey Emily, awesome studies here. Can you explain a bit your process? underpainting, tonal ranges, pallet choices etc.. Thanks very much ;-)

[emily g]

Idiot Apathy--haha, thanks for pushing me to update. Where are you? I miss you.
teena_mom--thanks!
Matsign--thank you. Yeah, it really takes a lot of time to develop your skills--more than people realize. I oil paint 3 days a week and work the other two days.
CgMonkey--hmm, I had some portraits but no full figure studies. I have some figure drawings at the beginning of the thread.
Randolf--Thanks so much for taking the time to stop by. I have some teaser images of my next piece.
kidult--thanks!
FlameDragon--thank you
K.I.D.--thanks so much for your kind words.
RandAlThor--I took a picture of my palette for you. Basically I start blocking things in with broken color, then I go over it with smoother layers. There are some process pics earlier in the thread of this.

Here's some diagrams of how to set up for a still life in natural light. Note that you block the lower part of the windows so the light comes down at an angle.




Here's a picture of my palette. I like to pre-mix a few colors to make mixing faster. You can see that I mixed out some colors in value steps using white. This is so I can maintain better control of my values while mixing.
For example, if I want to gray a color down I can mix black into it. But that will make my color darker and mess up the value. So I choose a gray of the correct value and mix it in instead.


I have a new piece that I've been working on for a long time that I'm really excited about. I think I'll be ready to post it next week. Here's some teaser pics.

[seth1]

Nice work so far Emily, cant wait to see the final painting. Thank you for the Diagram that will help out lots in the future.

[RandAlThor]

Thanks for the piccies Em, I like that pallet trick of using little pools of pre-valued tones, cool.. keep posting. ;-)

[pennington]

Amazing paintings. I just read your post about using tracing paper. I've been looking for a good practice surface, how does the paper hold up with lots of paint? does it get very wrinkly? great pallet layout too. reminds me I need to get some yellow ochre again.

[[void]]

Can't wait to see the finished article its looking really good, I'm sure I'll be bugging you for years to come for oil painting advice!

[CGMonkey]

Looks incredibly exciting! Can´t wait!

[Craig D]

Looking very good Emily!
Quick question though, on the still life setup you have your easel at an angle away from the light. Is that about reducing glare?

[monsi]

great, i await your portrait.

that palette looks like it'd be uncomfortable to hold, balancewise.. nice amount of space though

[teena_mom]

hi Ema,
i like "the diagrams of how to set up for a still life in natural light" it's v.useful,
but the palette color ,hhmm i see this palette is not complete _ yellow ??
Colors in the palette divided into: the colors of light and shadow colors or colors of hot and cold colors, And is distributed as follows: Blue ,green ,yellow"in the middle" yellow ocher, orange ,red & White in corner of palette . No presence of explicit black and white not open on the board, only keeps the colours of the rainbow.
I hope that this will be useful !!

love,
Esraa

[emily g]

seth1--thanks, glad you found it useful.
RandAlThor--no problem. The value-mixing makes things a little easier for me.
pennington--I have not had a problem with tracing paper wrinkling, but if you want a little sturdier surface to practice on I would suggest trying mylar.
[void]--hehe, thanks for the nice comments.
CgMonkey--thanks!
Craig D--Yes, you are correct. It's all about getting enough light on your painting + avoiding glare + still being able to see your subject.
nethus--I have some pics below explaining about the balance of the palette.
teena_mom--thanks. Yes, you are right that I don't have yellow on my palette, but sometimes I add it based on the subject I'm painting.

[Jason Scanlon]

Woo! Go Emily! Haha what could i possibly contribute? Can't wait to see the portrait, progress looks lovely from what we can see. Thanks for the helpful palette info!

[monsi]

I suspected their might be some weight hiding under there. interesting.

[Maledict]

Absolutely astounding oils Emily, I can only hope to get as good as you some day

I still haven't started my bargue drawings yet, busy with my Bottega at the society of figurative arts, as well as having started my sketchbook and trying to update everyday. But only 1 person has replied *sigh* Oh well

[emily g]

.61803--nice of you to comment! Thanks for stopping by and I hope everything is well with you!
nethus--hehe, yeah.
Rabbi Satan--I hope you learn a lot from the Bargue drawing experience.

I just posted a thread in the FF section with a selection of my favorite works from the last year.

And here's some images of the painting I was talking about earlier.

Part way done


Finished


Close-up

[Larriva Art]

*GASP*

Truly masterful!

[Jessica Hook]

Emily Emily Emily!!!! So beautiful! Makes my heart flutter.

[GriNGo]

nice progress shots... really great work! I'm jealous of you studying in Whittaker's studio...

[Molly]

my god, this is portrait is beautiful! Such a treat coming to this thread....

[Pritchetty]

this is indeed a masterpiece!
How did you train to paint portraits?

[Gulzaar]

Wow that last portrait is absoloutely stunning Emily, really nice work! Could I just ask you if you've done work like this before, as in oil portrait work before you started studying under W.WHitaker? Just seems like really remarkable progress in what hasn't been that long I suppose.

[aesir]

incredible detail on such a small piece!! I wish I had that kind of brush control

[Cirrus]

truly beautiful

[poise]

Wonderful progress shots Emily, thanks for shareing.
Just one question: what is the surface you are painting on for that portrait, and how did you prepare it?

[hp]

wow i was completely blown away by the last portrait!!! it was like...progress shot...then AMAZING painting

only crit is her right shoulder (our left)...the top of the shoulder seems a bit unfinished but i'm sure it's just the way the light on it was or something.

[Craig D]

Awesome Emily, truly well done. This is done at such a high level.

I think HP EMily meany our right for the shoulder. I wondered if that was too soft as well, but it certainly works and is probably getting more into personal preferance.

[Dr.Satan]

Very nice work Emily.

The anatomy around the suprasternal notch is nicely rendered. This is one of my favorite areas to draw/ paint.

I still think I can take you.

(just kidding)


Nice progression of work.

[RandAlThor]

awesome... thats all i can say at the mo.. ;-)

[DannySketch]

cant thank you enough for sharing these Miss Emily G, this whole sketchbook is filled with useful and inspiring stuff.

[Samantha]

nice !! vrey nice ....