A Seascape

SO this time I basically just tried to paint from a photograph on my calendar that I liked. The photo was taken of The Twelve Apostles, Port Campbell National Park, Victoria, Australia. I just thought it was really pretty, and it's a place I wouldn't mind seeing someday. So here's my version of it:

This is my painting with the original picture above it.



And by itself . . .





I've decided I really like painting water. It's kind of easy for me to paint water for some reason - I just get the colors right, swirl them around a little on the canvas, and somehow I always like the way it turns out. I'm actually pretty happy with this painting.

What I really want to paint though is mountains. I think they are a little harder to get right, so I need to practice them more. I'm going to try to do a mountainous landscape for the next one I think.

Attempting a Landscape

I decided to try to paint a landscape this time, because that is more the type of thing that I would enjoy painting. I love the outdoors and the mountains, so I want to get good at painting landscapes.

For this painting I just copied a picture of a painting in one of my painting books, Alwyn Crawshaw's Oil Painting Course by Alwyn Crawshaw. And the painting I tried to imitate was one of Alwyn Crawshaw's paintings.
Here's my finished attempt:





I feel like the colors aren't quite right for the foothills on the far edge of the lake. They need more of a greenish tint or something. I like how the sand turned out on the edge of the water, but I feel like there should be something in the foreground - I really don't know what to add though. What do you guys think? I also feel like the painting as a whole should either be more detailed or more vague than it is - it's stuck in the uncomfortable middle, and I'm not sure what to do about it.

One thing I learned with this painting is that it is fun to paint water. You basically just swirl around a bunch of colors, add a few shadowy reflections, and it just looks great! And if you mess it up you just do a few blending brushstrokes and no one would ever know. Yes, I had fun with that.

I really do like painting landscapes - I think my future paintings will be limited to that. I might add buildings or fences to my landscapes sometime, but I like paintings of the outdoors. Indoor things just don't inspire me the same way.

The colors of the leaves are so gorgeous where I live right now that I'm tinkering with the idea of trying an Autumn painting. I want it to turn out really well if I do that though, because Autumn scenes are near and dear to my heart. I'm a little scared to try painting the leaves - I want to capture the feeling of Autumn just right, and I'm not very good at this yet. I may or may not do an Autumn painting this year - we'll see. I might want to be a better artist before I try that.

Flowers . . .

A couple of the painting books I'm reading suggested painting some flowers next. So I did. I'm not really loving it. Here's my painting, which is finished until I decide that something needs a better highlight or something. Try to ignore the glare from the flash on my camera.





Not really crazy about how this turned out. It's alot harder to keep all the tone and value stuff straight when you throw color into the mix. I feel like the tonal values just aren't right, but it's really hard to just fix it.

The background was initially plain, but it needed something, so I tried adding a window. Not the best window, in my opinion, but it needed something.

The vase is a little crooked too, but I'll get better at keeping things straight the more I paint.

I do like how the water in the vase turned out. I decided to be adventurous, challenge myself a little bit, and make the vase clear with water in it - and I think it was worth the risk. I liked having the freedom to try different colors and brush strokes in an effort to paint the stems and leaf and rocks and such through the distortion of glass and liquid. It was the funnest part of the painting, and it's the part that turned out the best, I think.

Overall I guess it's not too shabby for my first color painting, but I'm a big fan of this one right now. However, I did learn some important things while painting this:

1. Try to mix my own colors more. I caught myself just using paint straight out of the tube a few times during this painting, and that's a no-no. If you use colors straight out of the tube, then all the greens in your painting will look like variations of the same shade, or all your blues, or whatever. It takes life out of your painting if you use it straight out of the tube, so I need to try to mix different colors for different objects - because honestly, nothing is exactly the same color as anything else in real life, unless it's manufactured to be the same color.

2. I need more practice at tone and value. The colors throw everything off for me. I think it might not be a bad idea to do another monochrome painting, just for more practice. So my next painting may be another black and white. Or maybe I'll go for sepia this time, just for some variety. I guess you'll see soon!

3. I do not like painting flowers. Or fruit. Which is what the books seem to want me to do before I move to landscapes. But flowers and fruit just aren't me. I don't think they are my painting style.
As far as painting goes, I'm not inspired by flowers unless they're on a hillside, and I'm not inspired by fruit unless it's on the tree. And in order to paint something well, I think you need to be inspired by it, inspired in such a way that you want to just pick up a brush and paint.

Landscapes inspire me. Fresh air inspires me. Mountains inspire me. Anything outdoors inspires me. I'm just not inspired by indoor subjects. So I've decided it's time to take this act to the great outdoors! Expect a landscape painting in the near future.