Painting

[Dan]

Anybody here have a lot of experience in acrylic or oil? I have been getting into painting recently, something I haven't done since high school art class. I mostly use acrylic because I can't afford anything else. The first 4 or 5 pieces were just experiments with texture and not much depth, mostly to put some colour on my walls. But now when painting actual things the problem I seem to consistently have is that everything seems flat and dull all of the time. I can't seem to pull anything out of the canvas. If I had a camera I'd post some pictures.

Using some other people's work as examples. I want to go from this:

to this:

 

[Smoke]

Wait, does this mean my image sucks? D:

 

[Crushenator 500]

You know those are both digital, right.?

Why aim so low anyway, that bottom piece is nice, but it's still just a sketch

I actually think smoke's has more depth than the other one btw, it's all in the values and his picture has better ones

Try to think in planes and tones and your work should improve a bit

Posting some wouldn't hurt either, can't crit what we can't see

 

[Smoke]

Answer me damnit!

 

[Dan]

No, sorry I didn't mean to insult your picture. It was just handy for comparison. The other one feels like it pops out more, and that is what I think I need more of.

 

[Smoke]

Oh I wasn' t insulted. I just felt I had to inject drama into the situation.

 

[Dan]

I finally got a photo of a painting I gave to a friend recently:

 

[VirusType2]

The horse is nice.

I don't think I've ever used oil (I'm burnt... maybe once in high school), but what I think is the problem with the sunset one is that the further clouds look like they are on top of the close up clouds, which is backwards.

Also, I think you can take a paintless brush and soften the entire thing up (anti-aliasing bscly) so it's blended and not so much contrast between colors. Real life has infinite color. The sunset painting has like 20 colors. You can make it have multitudes more colors by blending the colors into each other like smudges.


I think to get eye-popping 3D, the trick is in the shadows, size ratios (big things are small in distance - I forget the name of it.), and making sure that the closer object is clearly in front of the further object) The shadows can be real hard without a reference photo (which I've never used and really need to) Also, decide early on where you want your light source/s coming from.

My biggest fault is that I do things from memory. When was the last time I've even seen a ****ing (insert subject here) \? I can remember the basic things, but when it comes down to faces, and how the legs should look, etc., I really don't know.

 

[Dan]

This painting is actually acrylic not oil, so I can't do a whole lot of smudging. The clouds were originally backlit dust (in the photo reference), then it started to look more like an ocean wave, so I went with that for a bit, then just turned it into cloudy things for variety near the top. The thing that bugs me the most I would say is the anatomy of the horse. It looks fine when I first look at it. But if I look at it for more than 5 minutes the horse looks like some bulgy mishapen thing and it loses all dimensionality. I think a lot of the anatomy issues come from that fact that I took a wider aspect photo, and then basically squished in into a narrow frame, making the whole horse thinner and more from a front view.

I also tried rubbing some latex caulking I had lying around into the canvas for texture. It might do some bad things for the longevity of the painting, but you can kinda see the effect on the mark on the horse's forehead.

 

[VirusType2]

This painting is actually acrylic not oil, so I can't do a whole lot of smudging. The clouds were originally backlit dust (in the photo reference), then it started to look more like an ocean wave, so I went with that for a bit, then just turned it into cloudy things for variety near the top. The thing that bugs me the most I would say is the anatomy of the horse. It looks fine when I first look at it. But if I look at it for more than 5 minutes the horse looks like some bulgy mishapen thing and it loses all dimensionality. I think a lot of the anatomy issues come from that fact that I took a wider aspect photo, and then basically squished in into a narrow frame, making the whole horse thinner and more from a front view.

I also tried rubbing some latex caulking I had lying around into the canvas for texture. It might do some bad things for the longevity of the painting, but you can kinda see the effect on the mark on the horse's forehead.

I was talking about the ranchers. the 2nd image from top. Does what I said make more sense?

I think the big black horse is fine how it is. If you want it to be perfect well, you know what they say.. practice makes perfect.

 

[venturon]

I think you may have been a bit drastic in foreshortening the horse's front legs. They look too short considering the size of the horse's head and the angle they're sticking out at, making it seem ill-proportioned or stubby. I think the fact that the horse is jet black makes things difficult: the colour certainly stands out well enough from the background, but shading it to give it an impression of solid form and making it 'leap out' of the actual painting is probably quite a challenge. I don't know much about painting (or horses) so I suspect you'll find what others have to say a little more helpful.

Great painting though, and much better than anything I could do.

 

[juliatkarzon]

I need to do an abstract art design

Well, I need to do an abstract art design for my art class by taking one-square-inch from a picture and painting it in monochromatic colors. I was thinking a waffle cone? Any other ideas would be great. Basically I am simplifying a small portion of a picture. The painting is going to be 18X18", and I'm having surgery on my good shoulder this Monday, so the simpler the better. Thanks!

 

[Dan]

Here you go. I recommend the top left corner