Master Copy - Rockwell

Here's the final Rockwell copy, had lots of fun rendering this guy out and learned a ton. I think this is probably one of my most successful oil paintings to date, both in the form, color, and drawing.

This one was super useful to study to learn some stuff about color, and Rockwell's form is so clear that it's really great to study to learn facial features.

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Master Copy - Rockwell WIP

Here's a new image for today. Apologies for not updating over the weekend, I was out of town visiting with family, teachers, and tasty oil paintings, and I figured your inboxes would prefer to be asked forgiveness than permission.

Anywho, this is the beginning stages of our latest assignment in head painting class, which is to copy a piece by the great Norman Rockwell. Needless to say it'll be no easy task, but I'm looking forward to it.

I tried to focus a lot on this drawing, cause most of my portraits so far have fallen apart in the drawing more than the painting, so I worked this all up in perspective, made sure to compare distances between features and wiped out and repainted any errors I could find. I think it was definitely worth it, the likeness isn't perfect but I think the structure is solid. There are some issues with the eyes and nose that I fixed but didn't get a chance to photograph, so it should be in pretty good shape. We'll see tomorrow when the rest of the painting goes down!

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Master Copy - Fechin

Here's a painting I did today which is a copy of a painting by Nicolai Fechin. Lots of fun!

The main goal was to further understand the limited palette we're using in oil, which is titanium white, yellow ochre, cadmium red light, and ivory black. You can create pretty much every color out of those four, just the cools are relative and muted, so a lot of the color relies on the color that's around it.

This was a great exercise not only to understand the palette, but also understand how to mix color, as well as see subtle color variations and paint them. Learning to mix the right hue, right value, and right chroma and then putting down just one correct brush stroke where it needs to be is hugely important, and it's one of the secrets of making effortless looking work. Needless to say, I'll need a lot more practice!