Painting Peter Stormare in oils, my first real portrait.

Peter Stormare??? 
Who is he? You are probably thinking.

I first saw him as John in Prison Break, then I discovered he was the poor lost soul who dies in Jurassic Park 2 with all the little dinosaurs attacking him in the river.  The bad guy in John Wick, he pops up absolutely everywhere and I just fell in love with his acting style.  His latest part is in American Gods as Czernobog.  I saw a picture of him holding a hammer covered in blood and I just knew I had to paint him.  The urge just wouldn't leave me.

I knew it had to be different from my others so I decided oils, yep, oils, and yep let's go big because well, that's what I do lol.  I painted him on plywood, 7mm thickness.  I use the grid method to get the picture onto the wood.  I always use my Surface Pro for this part, gosh I love that little computer.  I'm an Apple person but the Surface Pro could change me.  I use the grid that Art Tutor offer on their website, it is a brilliant tool.  Art tutor Grid drawing tool

This is Peter, in black and white because I just like to start out that way.

 I gridded up my plywood using my huge T square.  Never ever thought I would find a use for that big sucker, but I have lol.

Here is the finished product, yep, not little lol.

Then the tedious work of just copying whatever is in each square begins.  I actually don't mind this part, it stops most of the incessant noise in my head while I concentrate.

Once I am "happy" I do my umber line drawing and then the Umber wash.  Yes he looks ghastly.  Wait till the next bit, he looks worse.  This part only takes a few minutes.  Takes a while to dry so I usually do this at night and when I wake up he's all dry and staring at me, angrily.

Then I begin my loose interpretation of a black and white study.  I think I do this just get the courage up to start colour.

 I hang up my reference pictures on my board, I just go to Officeworks and get large photo prints for 80c.  It seriously helped me a lot more than just holding the Surface Pro.

And the oils begin, I had a very limited range of colours to begin with but honestly it was all I needed.  I believe my skin tone base colour for Peter was Red Oxide and Yellow Ochre.  Then adding different tones to get the different shades of skin.  I used Galkyd as the medium for this one, I like Galkyd, I need a bigger bottle.  It's just trial and error here, stepping back a lot, walking away a lot, staring at the painting a lot.

I actually fell in love with painting all over again, it was the blending and the little marks on what was perfectly smooth skin, the wrinkles.  How you don't actually paint the wrinkles, you paint around them and the wrinkles will come.  It took me a while to understand that.  The beard, Oh man it took me forever, so many layers, waiting to dry, but I am so glad I didn't stop.

All that was left to do was pick out the background colour, that is always my hardest thing.  Backgrounds are just difficult but very important.  Overall I was super happy with this one, I wanted to do more and more oils paintings.

Painting is my therapy, it's my saviour.  Two years ago I couldn't paint anything, not a thing.  So just in case you are wondering, it is a learnt behaviour.  Some people have the awesome talent naturally and I am jealous of them, but the rest of us learn it.  I just had to wait until I was ready.  Until I had to choose between living for skinny and starving, or living for a reason.

I may obsess just a little about painting now, I think I may be slightly obsessive in nature lol.  Only slightly 😄.  I was beginning to miss my eating disorder before I started this painting.  I was getting depressed and the craziness in my head was beginning to win again.  

Then I saw American Gods and I just had to do it.  It became my source of crazy.  I would dream about painting him, stay up late and wake up early thinking about the mistakes I needed to fix.  It is an obsession for me, and if I don't have a current project I am working on to distract my crazy I start to drown again.

Anyway, on my next blog post I will be showing you my glowing dragon egg!!!!  It is a mixture of acrylic painting, glow powder and resin.  I also have made a polymer clay dragon tail to possibly place on it, I haven't quite finished it yet so I am unsure if I add it lol.  It will be a surprise.  Anyway here is a teaser of the unfinished egg.........

Until next time, I hope you all have an arty week with little to no crazies.

Making my first Resin geode after I saw Mrs Colorberry

OMG Resin geodes!!!!!

About six weeks ago I was flicking through facebook when I saw a magnificent piece of art that I just wanted, I needed to create.  It was Mrs Colorberry, and I watched the timelapse of her making a geode over and over again and decided to try it myself because it was just too beautiful not to.

This is the end result of my attempt at a resin geode table.

I wasn't too sure about using MDF so I used plywood, I think it was 12mm thick.  I primed it ready to accept the resin.  If I didn't prime the wood it would just suck everything up like the Bermuda Triangle.  I use gesso now but for this one I used a paint and prime spray paint, white.

I googled for geode images that I really liked, the blue seemed to make me happy lol.  So I then drew out some lines which I wanted to the resin to follow, lol, resin to follow, lol.

I didn't cut a hole in the middle of the geode this time because I wasn't sure it would work, so I decided to use resin with black resin dye to pretend to be the hole in the middle.  I actually let this dry overnight so it wouldn't mix with the next colours, that pesky resin, always wanting to self level.

Then the next day I attempted to do the blue and white resin layers, using a heat gun to mix them together so they looked natural and pretty.  Remember, gloves, mask when using resin and a heat gun.  Even if the resin says it's ok the colours you are mixing in it may not be.  Better to be safe than sorry.  Also make sure the piece you are working on is level and in a safe and secure spot covered from wind and dust.

I have these awesome resin pigments from Solid solutions in Australia, they make the most beautiful colours ever!!!  solid solutions resin and dyes

This is my attempt at the middle and keeping the resin within the lines, hmmm, so far not too bad lol.  The rocks I placed around the area I wanted the resin to cover, they were some clear rocks.  

This is the next layer, though still technically the first layer, I used blue rocks, blue dye in the resin and white dye as well, and of course glitter.

I had the plywood sitting on my painting mason jars, yeah, don't do that, if there is resin dripping over the side it collects around the rim of the jars, and makes it super hard to remove when dry.

After the layers above had dried I then decided to do the black edge, which I didn't want mixing with anything.  I also had black sand that I put on the edges of the geode to make it seem more realistic and natural.

I wanted this geode to be the most beautiful thing I ever made, so I ensured that all the layers were dry before adding the next.  The next layers were resin and glitter, mmmmm glitter, so pretty.

Then I just placed some more gems and glitter in each of the layers, and then followed all of this with a few clear coat resin layers to make it smooth.

The base was made by my husband and son out of lightweight aluminum.   The end product is a layer filled, shiny glittery monster which I have fallen deeply in love with.

So shiny and glass like....mmmmmmmm

I love the iridescent glitter that makes it look green from one angle and blue from another.  I am super proud of this baby.

Moral of the story, don't burn yourself, follow the reference picture, don't put so much glitter on the final layer.  Do enjoy it, make layers and have fun.

Next up on the blog will be my Peter Stormare oil painting.  This is the painting that made me realise that I love to paint, and I want to get better.

Have a great week, an artists week.

Painting Tyrion Lannister's greatest moment in Game of Thrones........

Tyrion Lannister's greatest moment you ask, there's so many, True, but this......

Was his proudest moment don't you think?

To begin with I do not chose the easiest of characters to paint do I?  Peter Dinklage (Tyrion) was super hard to paint and honestly I am still not happy.  I can see the errors everywhere, but that is where time and practice come into it.

To start with I wanted to paint him on a wood canvas.  Aldi actually had some wood boards for sale a few weeks ago, so I got a few.  Got to be honest, I did not find them the greatest paint on.  There were also splintered edges on them,so I had to sand and gesso the board a fair bit.  Once that was done I began painting.  

As always, this bit is scary, it's the "Oh crap should I just burn it and run!" moment.  I drew him very loosely in and then went over him with acrylic umber, then I did the whole board in an umber wash, basically very watered down umber paint.  I use Golden Glazing Medium though because I don't want to use too much water because under binding just doesn't sound great.

I always have a problem with backgrounds, always.  This one just came to me though, I really did want it like the reference picture.  So I looked around at tutorials to see if anyone had something similar for me.  Of course The Art Sherpa had the perfect background.  This is the link to the background painting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBUu2gZ7-R8&t=4601s

I of course changed things around and added the extras that I wanted, and took the lighting in my reference photo into consideration.  Plus I added copper paint.  Oh my that is a wonderful colour!!

I went over the lines of Tyrion so the background would look complete.  This is all still in acrylics, mainly because I do not have the range of colours in oils that I have in acrylics.  Yet.

Then after doing a grey scale, which took longer than usual.  His nose and eyes and mouth were killing me, I almost gave up.  But I wanted to paint him.

I didn't have any natural light in the garage when I mixed up his face colour in oils.  As a result it was very pink, I need natural light.

This is a quick timelapse of my attempts to fix up the skin colour and get his face right.  Just doing the same things over and over again.  I needed to walk away.

After all the fiddling around I decided to just get on with it.  Just paint on the days I felt like I could handle it.  His face and angle was just so difficult, but I didn't give up.  Made so many mistakes, got super angry, but I kept going. 

I will make more in depth painting videos once I become more time savvy, right now I'm fumbling around like a little lost puppy.  This is all so new to me, I am used to hiding and not letting anyone see my work.  So this is really difficult.

I just needed to get back on the horse and start blogging, I have been scared, but I will persevere.

In a few days I will have the resin geode table that I made up on the blog.  It was my first foray into table making, large resin use and geodes, so of course I had to go big lol.  Yep, made mistakes, learnt from mistakes, I hope.  Please check out the result of my month long resin table top below.  I like it.

I will have a more in depth blog about the resin geode table, as it is long and complicated but sooooo worth it..........

 

Tips on oil paints and mistakes not to make.

Oils are FREAKING AMAZING!!

 Expensive, they are expensive, yes, but they last so much longer than Acrylics.  Oils are also not born equal.  I have the cheap ones (mont marte), the middle of the range (derivan) and a little bit higher on the scale is Artist Spectrum and Winsor and Newton.  They are definitely more expensive per ml compared to Acrylics (some of them lol), but a little goes a long way with oils.  If its kept right you can keep using the same little speck of oil over and over again for a while.  How long?  I do not know lol.  It took me ten days to paint my Peter Stormare (Czernobog) portrait, and I used the same squirts of paint from the beginning.  Except with the cheaper oils, they were not always usable.

I bought all the good quality oil paints I have recently from a shop here in Hervey Bay that I absolutely love.  It is called Art and Soul Studio and it has absolutely every kind of paint, including Golden paints (YAY OH YAY).  Here is the link for the shop if you want to check it out,  Art and Soul Studio oil range
I highly recommend it.  I could get lost there for days lol.  

I tried a long time ago when I was very sick to do an oil painting, didn't bother with YouTube or any instructions on how to use oil paints.  Mistake, bad bad mistake.  I didn't even realise this until recently though.  I am kind of embarrassed about the mistakes I made 😳.

 I, of course decided to use one of the biggest canvas available to me, and the cheapest oils I could buy (mont marte).  I also completely disregarded copyright rules 😰.  This was supposed to represent my anorexia, because at this stage I was lost in it, devoured by the darkness.  I still wish to paint my very own version of this painting.  It is supposed to be me on the top of a bed reaching out to touch the monster under the bed who starts turning me to bone.

Mistake number one:

• Canvas tooooooo big for a very beginner, no, just no.
• Copyright, ok I was only doing this for myself so no harm no foul, but in reality it's just plain wrong to copy others work.
• I (So embarrassed to say this), used oils like acrylics.  I had no medium like Galkyd or Linseed oil or liquin.😞
• I didn't clean my brushes (I know, I know).
• I didn't take advantage of the best aspect of oils, blending!!  I just dumped it on like acrylic and didn't blend.  I look at this cringe, I am so sorry for burning your eyeballs with my blasphemy lol.
• In theory I think this is a good idea, and definitely when I have more paintings under my belt I will take this on, just like I took anorexia on.  I may not win, I may just put it in the cupboard, but I am going to redo this idea. 
• There is nothing wrong with cheap oils for beginners, it is definitely money friendly.  I will say this about mont marte oils, they do not have the range the more expensive brands do, but in a beginner this isn't a problem.  They work quite well, unless they are old and then they are drier than my skin on a summers day in the Adelaide dessert.
• OMG I just remembered I didn't even (so sorry) gesso the canvas.  😨
• I apologise for my errors against oils and painting lol.  I threw this one away in a fit of temper because I couldn't do my face.  Then I decided I was worthless.

Don't ever let a painting or a creative activity decide your worth in this world. 

 Now I am still learning the potential of oils, they definitely have their benefits over acrylics.  They have more CADMIUM colours.  They have cadmium green, I have not seen that in acrylics yet.  It is pretty.  Oh so pretty. Still to this day Oil paintings are considered more valuable than acrylic or watercolour.  I think that is based on the Masters and their expertise with oils.  If I did the exact same painting in oils and acrylics the oil will sell for more.  I don't believe there is any reason for this except an ingrown belief that we all have that oils are more worthy.

I won't lie, I still haven't decided which paint I prefer, but from recent activity I'm leaning towards an acrylic base with oil on top.  Acrylics are forgiving, they can be blended like oils if you use retarder or Golden Glazing Liquid.  They are cheaper in the beginning, they are easier to fix mistakes, they do not smell anywhere near as bad as oils and their mediums and cleaners. It is so much easier to clean the acrylic paintbrushes.  I still have not found a an oil paintbrush I love.  I've figured out I prefer the soft smooth paintbrushes for oil but I do not have many of them.

Going from acrylics to oils is like going from scrapbooking to cardmaking.  They are in the same category but they are nothing alike.   

Oils just have this smooth buttery feel about them.  Thinning them with a medium or odour free solvent is amazing.  Painting oils on wood, yes, just yes.  It's like they were meant to be together.

This is my very first fantasy painting, done all in oils except for the base coat.  Oils can go on top of acrylics but acrylics can not go on top of oils.  Why I hear you ask, well here is the very technical answer, because everyone says so.  Maybe one day I will try it and maybe my canvas will explode, or crack, or come to life, but right now I follow the rules.  

 You decide for yourself what is best for you, I thought acrylics were the bees knees until i actually used oils how they are supposed to be used.  For a quick painting I will chose acrylic, I still love acrylic.  But oils, they just have sooooo much potential.  This is my oil portrait.....

 This is my acrylic portrait.....

 
 I love them both, but oil has so much more potential don't you think?  I would love to hear your opinions and even see your oil vs acrylic paintings.



Love

Kristina O