Oil painting *UPDATE March 2nd*

[Boogieman]

Update: I scanned the sp I posted before and I'm reposting it now instead of the crappy photos. I also attached scans of two still lives I made a while back. Been to swamped in school lately to paint as much as I'd like, but I got a break next week and a bunch of panels and canvases prepared so watch our for more updates ahead

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I just finished this self portrait and I'd really like to get some feedback on it. I'm sorry for the piss poor photos, I don't have the equipment to photograph it well or the patience to let it dry and then scan it. I'm posting one photo with lotsa glare but kinda accurate colors, and one photo with less glare but worse colors. Both pretty out of focus... If you can make out what it is, please comment!

24x36 cm (9.5''x14'') oil on panel.

[P E N Ricklund]

Hey, looking good. Very nice to see that you painted a selfportrait in oil, big props. Learnt anything from the Alla Prima book?
I think you could have made it a little more dramatic, like adding some temprature in the light, a cool lightsource maybe, and a warm shadow. It helps more than one think. Could have been eniugh to make the shadow cooler.
Anyway, I sent you an pm.

Good luck with the painting, struggling with the same things here
Hugs!

[Idiot Apathy]

Try photographing them like this diagram shows;
http://www.asu.edu/cfa/wwwcourses/ar...rt_diagram.jpg

Looks real good, especially the light side. Shadow side feels a bit irregular, could help to distinguish it a little more from the background - just to carve the other side of your face out. Like the strokes and 'unfinished' bits on the bottom.

[Boogieman]

Pencilator - I've learnt tons from that Alla Prima book! You really should get it, sorry Mindflaw snatched my copy before you had the chance Thanks for the crits as well, I'll try to think about that next time around. Gotta get some new lightbulbs first tho

Idiot Apathy - Thanks for the comments! I didn't spend half as much time on the shadow side as I did on the light side. Hell I spent more time on the background than on the shadow side of my face... I thought it'd be a cool idea to lose the shadow parts of my head almost entirely into the background, but I guess I was wrong. I'll be more disciplined next time and just try n paint it the way it looks. I'm gonna try photographing with a setup like in the diagram, just gotta buy another e14 socket spotlight. Wonder what real studio lights would cost?

[chaosrocks]

I have pretty good luck taking pics of wet oil paintings in bright cloudy light, no flash and I use a tripod
or a monopod if Im in a hurry. I can't hand hold cause my hands shake too much.
I too am struggling with oil paint ..this is shaping up really nicely. i would like to see the folds of the fabric handled with little more care. It comes into the foreground and yet is more disolved than the back ground. O r maybe I just have a thing about fabric.....(jk).
do your painting s go through an "ugly " phase? where it just never is goingto be anything but an awkward bunch of blobs? if so...What do you tellyour self to get past that?

lovely work, anxiously awaiting more
chaos

[Idiot Apathy]

No no, don't abandon exaggerations and effects such as that, here I just felt there was a few anomalies that made it feel a bit funny is all.

Check into chiaroscuro if you are interested in that sort of thing, specifically Caravaggio.
http://www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/art.asp?aid=589

[Boogieman]

chaosrocks - Whenever a painting I'm working on is starting to look like crap I take a few steps back, look at it and try to figure out what exactly is bothering me. If I spot the problem(s) I try to fix it. If I can't spot what's wrong I sometimes force my way through anyway and wind up with a painting I hate, or take a break for a few hours and hope I'll be able to spot it when I come back. Sometimes it works sometimes it don't. Richard Schmid has a great chapter on how to save a crashing painting in his book "Alla Prima - Everything I Know About Painting". He says (I paraphrase) that any problem in your painting is either a drawing problem, value problem, color problem or edge problem. Locate the particular strokes (blobs) that are bothering you. Are they in the right place, of the right size, with right color & value and do they have appropriately soft or hard edges? Probably not, which is why you don't like them, figure out which of the above it is and do your best to fix it. If everything's just a big mess and can't be fixed, scraped it off and do over. I had some problems with this painting. In the beginning it looked very promising, half way through it started to fall apart and I thought I was gonna fail, but toward the end I managed to bring it together again and I'm pretty happy with what I ended up with. Thanks for that photographing tip btw! I'll shoot it outside next time I'm home during the day, this weekend maybe.

Idiot Apathy - Thanks I love Caravaggio.

[Boogieman]

Update at the top! Nothing much but I hope you enjoy them. Thanks again to everyone who posted.

[Dizon]

Yo Boogiewoogie )

I'm lovin your paints, man. My favorite is the tube of paint. Well done! I hope I can join in the bandwagon soon.

Do you have a sketchbook???

[Seedling]

Holy cow! That tube of paint pops off the screen. I’m diggin’ the blurry shoes, too, but it’s those heavy paint globs on the paint tube that really won me over. The dark side of the face needs to have the same care put into it as the light side, even if you want it to disappear into the dark, as well as the shirt and hood. The lips and the dark eye in particular need refinement in order to be up to par with the most successful parts of the image – the lit skin and the colors of the ear. Those skin tones are lovely.

[Boogieman]

Thanks for the comments guys, glad you like it

Seedling - I totally agree with you about the shadow side of the face, I should have spent a lot more time on it than I did. Although the hoodie is intentionally left loose and messy and I kind of like the effect I got from it. Thanks.

patzdon - It's about time you show us some paints! I love what you do with that pencil and I wanna see what you can do with a brush I don't have a sketchbook anymore, used to but it died. Might bring it back sometime or I'll start a new one. Maybe this summer...

[Chris Bennett]

I agree with Seedling about that tube of paint - there's just something about it that speaks to me - glad to see someone else having a fight with red, trying to bring this most truculent of colours 'in tune' with the rest of the painting. You have succeeded very well. Rather like the boots too! I guess what one tries to do is make the paint look like it arrived all at once on the canvas.