Redoing an Old Portrait, May 2023 Painting
Going back in time to May 2023, here is an oil painting I did around that time based on when it was shared to the Amdall Gallery Instagram. This post will include a static image of the piece, an embed of the time lapse video, and then some verbiage from when I wrote about the painting on social media at the time. So, keep in mind what’s written here is a bit of a time capsule.
At this point, I’m comically behind on sharing paintings to this website – 110 paintings that I haven’t shared here! There is zero chance I have time to actually share them all unless I quit my job or something, so I’m going to have to start skipping more. I’ve leapfrogged over a couple of months for this one, and I’ll start jumping more soon. Let’s go back then and see what I had to say about this painting…
May 2023: Redoing an old portrait, oil on paper.
Redoing an old portrait, oil on paper. This was a fun one! Occasionally, I like to redo an old portrait to gauge how I’ve improved. If I’ve given it enough space, 2-3 years or so, the difference is pretty significant. It’s fascinating to actually visually see what I’ve learned, rather than just broadly estimate. I’ve done this exercise previously comparing pencil drawings, but never comparing a painting to an old drawing.
The thought crossed my mind to try this, and I had the perfect old drawing in mind. This is one from late 2020, which I was not very satisfied with. I didn’t like the spatial arrangements (head tilt, feature placement) or colors (too dull and muted) in the pencil version. I tried this again with oil paints – the result was so much better! The colors are much more vibrant and match what I wanted but couldn’t achieve with the original. And with all of this “no measuring” freehand painting I’ve been doing, the feature placement was much better.
In this time-lapse video, I also tried to do something a bit different. I usually just share the high speed progression video as-is, but this time I also added a comparison at the end with the drawing and painting side by side. Hopefully that adds something useful to this one!
This is so much better now! However, it looks like you are using black to create shadows, am I correct? If so maybe this video or others like it will help… shadows on faces are colored, darker than lit areas but not grayed, not with black blended in. https://youtu.be/3cgXG00o8sQ?si=AX6hW_frXYQoy51Q
Hello there! Hope you’re doing well and happy new year to you. That’s actually tough to answer, since this painting was so long ago now – it was actually from May, about 110 paintings ago. So it’s really hard to remember exactly.
I can tell you that at some point around that time, I did stop using true blacks and instead worked on blending them from umbers and ultramarine blue. And actually, I feel like that suggestion may have originated from a suggestion from you (or another WordPress artist). It was a great tip! I find I like it much better.
I’m still trying to figure out what to do about how far behind this blog is, but in the meantime, if you were interested I do have my latest painting on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa2XyGk00Ww . With this one, I think it might be easier to get a sense of how I shadow and use darker colors.
Hi John, it’s Phoebe from WAGblog. I just watched most of that video you suggested and wow, that was quite a challenge you set yourself and you acquitted yourself quite well. When I say don’t use black to create shadows, I mean not even a mixed black as shadows are not black. Once I did a self portrait in which I set myself the rule to only use greens and reds and yellows, no brown no white and no black. It taught me a lot about how to achieve shadows using just colors. By the way, I love that you sketch your portraits on canvas using thinned paint! I still sketch in pencil and seal the sketch under 2 layers of matte medium, at least when Im painting with oils on paper.
What an interesting challenge! It reminds me of one of my favorite artists over on instagram – have you seen any of Andrew Cadima’s paintings? He’s got some fantastic two color value studies that are so fun to watch. He did one that was basically just two different types of blacks, really impressive!
I appreciate the comments and you checking the post out! Hope the start of 2024 is great for you
110!! I wonder if I’ve ever even done 110 paintings, thanks for making me feel so much better about infrequently updating WordPress. Happy new year and all the best to you and the family.
Haha Steve do I win the “slackers of WordPress” championship this year?! I’ve been trying to figure out how to recapture that old mania behind updating the site, but I just can’t find it anymore. Just not enough hours in the day, you know? Happy new year to you and yours as well! Cheers to a great one for you