This painting of a woman in a dark room is another portrait study in my efforts to practice specific areas that aren’t my strongest. There

This post is broadly about reference images and where to get them, but really the purpose is to discuss my first experience actually paying someone to pose for painting references.
Read more »This post is going to be about the importance of a painting’s initial structure. Basically, how the build and forms that you start with can impact the finished product, whether
Read more »With this post, I want to talk a little bit about painting composition and color. At the point in time when I did this painting, which was a couple months
Read more »This post is about my very first attempt at oil painting. Well, really first ever attempt at any type of painting, which to my surprise was actually done this past
Read more »One of the early pandemic projects I started was to transition from progression .gif slides of my drawing process into full time-lapse videos. I created a YouTube channel to host
Read more »Apparently, the beginning of April is book publishing time! Last year, I released a book called Pencils and Process. That one took months to write, and was a 150ish page
Read more »My free time has been pretty well monopolized recently, first with writing a book, and then with figuring out the ins-and-outs of independent publishing. Now that the book is out
Read more »As you may have seen on the front page or my ongoing forum thread, I published a book recently! It’s something that I’ve vaguely wanted to do for a while,
Read more »It feels weird to say this, but I finished writing a book…and it’s actually published and available now! The book is called Pencils and Process, and it’s available via Amazon
Read more »A few days ago, there was a comment asking about which medium I use. This is a simple question, but a really great one – especially considering I never talk about
Read more »This painting of a woman in a dark room is another portrait study in my efforts to practice specific areas that aren’t my strongest. There
It might be sort of weird how I’m phrasing this title – a “Jon Amdall Self Portrait”…painted by Jon Amdall…written by Jon Amdall. That’s a
When I started this painting, I had some vague notions of treating it sort of like a capstone project. Although I’ve done over 80 paintings
I might say this too often, but the oil painting featured in this post seems to represent somewhat of a milestone for me. It’s of
The subject of this post is an oil painting I did of my all-time favorite musician Mike Patton. Patton is a man of many bands
The subject of this post’s oil painting is the second of two requests from my kids. This time, it was an attempt at a portrait
The subject of this post is an oil painting I did by request of my kids – it’s a portrait of one of their favorite
I’ve mentioned on a few blog posts over the last few months how far behind I am sharing artwork. This has been a continuously building
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I value different technological tools I have at my disposal, particularly those large scale online services I
This post is broadly about reference images and where to get them, but really the purpose is to discuss my first experience actually paying someone
This post is going to be about the importance of a painting’s initial structure. Basically, how the build and forms that you start with can
With this post, I want to talk a little bit about painting composition and color. At the point in time when I did this painting,
This post is all about light and my struggles with it – I want to give my thoughts on lighting for a studio/workspace, but also
This post is all about messing up artwork, which is something I have a decent amount of experience with. I’m going to share some of
In this post, I want to take a step back and compare the different types of art videos I’ve shared on the YouTube channel. Basically,
This post is basically about how far behind I am on blogging. I came across a great quote from the artist Richard Schmid who said
My last custom portrait giveaway was several months ago, but a lot has changed for me in the art realm since then. With previous giveaways,
This post is centered around an oil painting of a character from Elden Ring named Melina, who acts as a guide for the player during
My painting journey has taken a learning-oriented turn towards trying to abandon some of my most loved crutches. The most significant of these crutches has
Buried at the end of my last post, I posed the question, “How do you digitize your artwork?” I embedded a crowdsignal poll with some
The next artwork in my recent parade of oil paintings takes us back to the topic of video games, which is not an unusual one
As I discussed in my last post, I’m making an effort to push myself more when it comes to artwork. A huge part of that
A couple of specific things are at the forefront of my mind right now when it comes to painting. The first is that, in a
Recently, I was approached by a co-worker to ask if I would help out with a display featuring Holocaust survivor portraits for an event called
With my 9th painting, I ran into a bit of a conundrum and drove home a good lesson for myself. To this point, I feel
Perhaps this post will trigger a bit of deja vu, as it’s a topic that I’ve already covered somewhat recently. This is all about self
As I continue on clearing my backlog of paintings that have yet to be shared, now I’ve come to the fourth of five paintings done
This post continues the discussion of a wild painting weekend I had in October, during which I somehow churned through five paintings. As I’ve mentioned,
This post will be an interesting one, at least from my perspective. If you’ve browsed this site, you can see pretty quickly that I’m all
Lately I’ve been discussing my recent journey into the world of oil painting, having shared my first attempt, a portrait of my kids, and an
One of the many unexpected questions that arose as I started learning to paint was, what do I do with extra paint on my palette
A few weeks ago, I finally made the leap to attempt painting for the first time. I’ve long admired the “painterly” look across the different
I’ve talked about my affinity for stock photos on many occasions. In previous posts, I’ve written about royalty free images, photo spamming on social media,
This is going to be yet another piece of artwork dedicated to Dallas Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki. Considering this is now the fourth drawing I’ve
This post is about my very first attempt at oil painting. Well, really first ever attempt at any type of painting, which to my surprise
As with my original post from a few years ago, I am once again a bit late in writing about Stranger Things. This time though,
This write-up covers some tips and thoughts regarding European travel, specifically when taking a Mediterranean Cruise. Like a lot of the world, we haven’t traveled
Somewhere in the neighborhood of a decade ago, my wife and I took a honeymoon trip to Europe. To celebrate this anniversary, we decided to
When I shared my last custom portrait giveaway, I mentioned that I had somehow let a year go by between these artwork raffles. I thought
In my last post, I wrote a bit on the fact that my posts are often a bit delayed from when the artwork is actually
There was a point in time, just a few years ago, when I typically referred to Amdall Gallery as both an art and data analysis
I am often slightly backlogged on writing blog posts. It’s something that I’ve mentioned previously and is probably fairly common for many artists who write
Historical Timeline
4+ years of blogging on Amdall Gallery
The very first blog post. Site was abandoned fairly quickly afterward until 2017.
Returned to the site, started analyzing data. The beginning of continuous blog posts for the next 4 years (and counting).
First artwork post, returning to drawing after over a decade. Didn't know at the time this would become a major hobby.
Early attempts at using colored pencils. Initial efforts were rough and poorly blended.
Artwork started to feature a thicker layering and blending style, which has been refined during the last couple years of practice.
Published my first book! Essentially about my experience returning to art after being away from it for so long.
Rejected by a local art show. A bit of a setback, but didn't impact me as much as I expected.
Start of the pandemic, stayed busy publishing a new book, drawing, and getting organized.
Launched a YouTube channel to show progression videos instead of .gifs.
Launched a new website focused on product impressions and reviews.
I have shown improvement over the years, but know there is still much to learn.
What's next? More drawing for sure. But will I attempt to enter another art show? Finally try painting? Perhaps get some formal training by taking a class? All great ideas - we'll see!
-
analysis (9) Art (171) artist (9) art show (7) artwork (28) bitcoin (6) colored pencil (21) contest (15) cryptocurrency (6) dallas (8) dallas mavericks (6) Dark Tower (7) data (13) daughter (7) daughters (7) drawing (117) experiment (7) family (14) family portrait (13) fan art (8) featured (11) gaming (7) giveaway (17) gleam (10) investment (6) kids (10) nba (8) oil (18) oil paint (14) paint (22) painting (31) pencil (72) pencil drawing (26) portrait (109) Prismacolor (44) prize (12) rpg (11) sketch (88) Stephen King (6) twitter (6) Unsplash (6) video game (8) winner (12) wordpress (7) youtube (9)