Thursday, April 24, 2014

figure paint

Almost done with my figure painting class!! Here's a quick summary of my progression. It was my second time taking a figure painting class/workshop, and definitely plussed my painting skills in both traditional and digital aspects. We did two portraits and two full figures under natural lighting. 
Portraits were fun to do. I already had experience with oil painting portraits before taking the class, but my first portrait did not come out well. By the second portrait, I finally started to crack into the layers of making the head feel dimensional with color, especially playing off between warms and cools of the skin against natural lighting. 

This is my second full figure painting after the second session. By this point, I just let go and painted in cruise control at a leisurely pace. As I mentioned previously, I would think way too hard on what color/value/shape to put down on the figure, and my thoughts got muddled because I would think about all these things at the same time. I kept forgetting to slow down and break things down step by step because I'm still learning.

Fifth session, where I've changed the color of the background. I felt that the background came out too bland compared to the figure, and on the suggestion from my friend, Jon, I added some color present on the figure to the background. The change definitely help pop the figure out more.

Sixth session. Perspective issues aside, I love how this one came out, especially the legs.