Glassybaby Painting #2 and a Quick Study

"glassybaby #2"
2012
oil on canvas
8 x 8 inches

I had another great painting session with Dean yesterday. I finished a second glassybaby painting which I have been working on for the last couple of sessions. I'm not quite as happy with it as I was with my first glassybaby painting" but that's okay. They are all going to be a little bit different. If I were to do another, I'd try to make the subject size a little larger, like it was in the first one. I think it makes for a better composition. The light blue color is sea foam, for anyone who wants to know. :)

Here are photos from the process of this painting over the last 3 sessions.


session one


session two


session three - complete


the set-up

Before I finished my second glassybaby painting, Dean had me do a new kind of lesson yesterday. He had a photograph of a boy at a beach that he had printed out. He also had two small boards that he had roughly sketched the boy on: one for him, and one for me. He knows that I've been doing a lot of figure drawing lately, and that my next painting that I'm planning will be of a figure. He thought it would be fun and helpful to have me do a quick study from the photograph. As I said, he had two sketches done - one for each of us, so that he and I could do it together side-by-side. I really enjoyed the process, and learned a lot from it! First, we spent about 10 minutes mixing paint colors to try to achieve the colors on the palette before we started to paint at all. It's always a hard process for me, as I don't think I have a strong sense of color, but I am learning! Next, we filled in each "block" of color - the three different colors of water, the color of the sand, and the dark and lighter color values in the skin tone of the subject. It was all very quick, maybe about 20 minutes of painting. It was very interesting to see how quickly a painting can come to life, even without focusing on details. I only used about 2-3 brushes, and a palette knife to paint with. I was concerned that it would be too flat, without much interest. I will say that once I brought it home, and looked at it with fresh eyes, that I was pretty happy with the results. It's one of those paintings that when you step back, you actually see a lot of detail, but when you look closely, there's not actually much there.

Very interesting process. I hope we do more of these little studies. I think I could benefit from them greatly.


"Study - Boy on Beach
2012
oil on board
6 x 6 inches

Here's one last photo of the paintings from yesterday's session.