Placid Painting

A while back I did a post called 11 hours in 30 seconds, showing a digital drawing I made of a cartoonish street. It looked like this:

It ended up standing alone on my page, so I decided, since making the first one were such fun, to try and do another one.

In the new drawing I wanted to practice drawing people.

I saw a technique I wanted to try where you basically just make out the outlines of a human being, and start drawing in the details from there on.

This worked out quite nice, and, having drawn up a few people, I needed to put them somewhere. So I made a street for them to stand on and a city surrounding to put them in.

Being done with this the real work was about to start, as every person, buidling and street needed some colour and additional shadowing.

So I set to work, and the hours just piled up.

Funnily enough I ended up using about the exact same time drawing this one as the last one.

After about 11 hours of drawing in total (not continuously..) my head ached a bit, but I could finally put the pen down and have a look at the final result. This is how it looked:

I think it ended up rather nice. Since there’s a lot of pastel colours in the drawing I’ve given it the name “Pastel city”.

When it came to the time-lapse video I couldn’t be any worse than last time, so here is a 30 second summary of all 11 hours over the Ipad:

The other day I came up with an idea.

Could I draw a whole drawing using only straight lines?

I picked up my Ipad and had a go at it using Procreate.

I don’t know what it is exactly, but this is how it ended up:

I usually try to paint as lifelike or real looking scenes as I can manage.

This makes it hard to get the paintings looking just right, but when I do succeed in some form I just find it exhilarating.

The pressure I put on myself to paint something good almost always ends up getting me disappointed with the actual result though.

I seem to think I’m a better painter than I actually am when I sit down to paint.

I then often get disheartened when I finish up the painting, not being happy with it at all, and leave it there for a little while.

When I come back though, I almost always find it looking better than I originally thought when leaving it.

This gives me back some confidence, which again sets me up for the following process with my next painting.

Anyway, in my last session I decided to give myself some slack, not worrying about things looking real.

I just wanted to be creative, doing something new and shake it up a bit.

So I made a very “not-lifelike” painting with two people walking in a colourful park, dabbing some paint on with a palette knife.

It felt good to not be so self-critical in the painting process. I don’t think it ended up as a very good painting, but I don’t feel it was that bad either.

Just somthing different…

Today I made a trainwreck of a painting.

I started out making a nice, calm, grassy mountain scape, and was very pleased with the way the painting was going.

As confidence grew larger with each brush stroke, I decided to put in a nice, calm creek in the bottom of the painting. Just to finish it off with the last touches.

Easy peasy, right?

As it turns out, not at all!

After putting in the first rocks of the creek I could feel the whole painting falling apart.

It just didn’t look good.

So, how to save the situation?

Why, start adding more stones and grass in an aimless, panicking way of course!

Just get some paint on there and hope for the best…

Well, that’s what I did, and – as it turns out – it ended up as a trainwreck of a painting.

I’m a bit embarrassed to show it, but this is how it ended up:

It almost hurt my eyes taking the picture, but as I did I saw something I really liked.

When I looked back on it I was really appreciating the way the sky and the mountain ended up.

I’ve been having a tendency to paint clouds in a kind of 2D-state, not having any volume or originality about them at all.

These ones were much more real looking, with an appearance of stretching out over the mountains.

The way the shadows was playing around on the grassy mountain sides was also pretty nice, I thought.

So, what the hell, let’s just crop the picture and be happy with the way the top half turned out.

I guess I’ll take it as something good in something very, very bad.

There’s been a lot of “firsts” lately, and my last session was therefore no exception.

I’ve been thinking about it for a while, and finally decided to have a go at my very first acrylic painting.

I’ve been getting a lot of acrylic paint as gifts over the years, and recently bought some additional colours myself.

I didn’t know what I wanted to paint, I just wanted to get the first one done to be honest. Just to try out the medium and see how I liked it.

To be honest acrylics reminded me a lot of oil painting when it came to the applying of the paint. But I soon noticed the far quicker time it took to dry though. Both on the palette and the canvas.

You simply don’t have a lot of time getting what you want to do done.

Anyway, I just started painting t be honest, not knowing what it would en up as.

I used a flat brush to kind of push the painting on, and started out making the dark stones of a little creek.

I then added some water and highlights, before finishing up with some grass and trees in the background. It all went rather quick.

All in all I think the first attempt went rather well, and acrylics is definitely a medium I want to use more of.

This is how it ended up:

As some of you may have noticed, I’ve started using Procreate to have a go at some digital drawings.

Mostly because I’ve been curious of how this medium works, but also because it’s so easy to pick up and lay down between the daily rutines.

You just pick up your digital pencil, and get to it..

Anyway, lately I’ve been using spare time during the day doing a coloured drawing. It’s actually based on my previous watercolour painting called “bird street”:

This time though, I wanted to add some more life to it. Digital drawings have the huge advantage that you can actually erase every stroke you make on the canvas.

This makes it feel a bit like cheating, and is why I still find the physical mediums the most charming.

But the digital format gives you the opportunity and courage to try and draw completely new things.

If it turns out bad, just remove it… right?

In the watercolour painting above I also wanted to add some more life to it, but I was just so worried I would ruin the whole painting, so I ended the session as it was.

Now I tried adding both a car, people and animals to the scenery.

I knew I’d used a lot of time drawing it when I was finally done, but when I checked the file on procreate I learned that I’d actually used about 11 hours drawing it in total…..

That’s a lot of time, and quite staggering when I’ve never spent a second of them bored with the drawing.

Luckily there’s a possibility to compress the whole 11 hour session down to a 30 second time-lapse video, which you can check out below.

I’m quite happy with how the whole thing ended up, and had a blast drawing it!

My first painting sold, ever, was bought from a local exhibition I participated in just a week ago.

I recently joined a local painting club in the town where I live, and after my first meeting I decided to take part in a pop-up gallery they were planning the following month.

These were the two paintings I decided to put up for show/sale:

The skill level of the other club members were a bit intimidating at first, but after a while I got more comfortable with my own paintings and stopped comparing them to everybody elses. The other members were also very supportive, and I settled with the thought that we all start out as amateurs at first.

Anyway, the pop-up gallery lasted four days, and I had absolutely no expectations regarding anyone wanting to buy the paintings.

I just felt like the exhibition was a fun step for me to take, as this was also the first time I showed of any of my paintings physically.

Well, suddenly on day three there came a message on my phone that the snowy painting was sold. To be honest it just felt surreal, as I did’nt even feel comfortable putting a price on it at all.

But it sure feels like a big step though to have sold my very first painting, and it definitely gave me an extra boost of motivation to keep on painting.

I guess I’ll buy me some more supplies for the unexpected income 🙂