Amdall Gallery

Perhaps I’ve finally found the solution to my massive blog post backlog. As I mentioned in my last post, I’m almost comically behind on sharing art here – about 8 months and 110ish paintings at this point. It’s such an odd notion, considering how much of a proponent of blogging I once was. But, as an experience artist once advised, considering my limited available hobby time, I had to decide between being an artist or a blogger or risk not doing either to my satisfaction. I decided to commit as much of that time as possible to painting over the last year or so, which I feel was the right decision. But I do still miss writing blog posts.

I tried a couple of things – batching multiple paintings in one post, as well as shortening and streamlining post content. Nothing was able to keep pace with the 2-3 paintings per week I was averaging. So, the solution? Perhaps it’s just to skip all the way to the present, and only share my favorite paintings going forward. That ultimately means skipping over some (or many) paintings, which certainly triggers that compulsive part of me. But I think this is probably the best path. So, here is one of my latest paintings, which was the last of 2023!

Last Painting of 2023, oil on paper

Although I thought I might squeeze one more in, this ended up being the final piece of the year – it’s the 146th of 2023, 179th overall since I started last October. I also made this one into a 20 minute walkthrough video on youtube to really cap things off. I did my first painting of 2024 on New Year’s day, so it didn’t remain the most recent for long. The painting in this post continues my efforts to create more interesting backgrounds -mostly nature scenes right now, in a nod to Bob Ross. Perhaps 2024 will evolve different types of scenes? I’d like to paint more themed subjects too, maybe some fantasy RPG type situations. Looking forward to seeing how this year goes!

The video I shared on YouTube is a 20 minute start to finish walkthrough of my oil painting portrait process. The featured painting is a figure study that emphasizes sunlight, with bright warm colors shining onto the subject and through the subject’s hat. To complement my videos on specific topics, I’m trying to make more of these complete walkthroughs of various lengths. Since this one is fairly lengthy, I thought I’d added some time stamps as well.

Here are some of the other walkthroughs I have so far:

• 10 Minute Oil Painting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCmtksp162o
• 15 Minute Oil Painting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppxklXKNByk
• 10 Minute Pencil Drawing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BDrrZ_-6ak
• Real Time/Live Oil Painting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyxqvkhXwKg

Materials Used:

• 🖼️ Paper: https://amzn.to/3BzYiNy
• 🖌️ Brush Set: https://amzn.to/3QV8u8Z
• 🎨 Gamblin Paints: https://amzn.to/3XnoDZA
• 🎨 Utrecht Paints: https://amzn.to/3OoTHnx
• 📷 Tripod: https://amzn.to/325pgPp
• 🦾 Adjustable arm: https://amzn.to/325FJ6c
• 🎨 Blick Oil Paints

Colors Used:

• ⬛️ Raw Umber (Gamblin 1980)
• ⬜️ Titanium White (Utrecht Studio)
• 🟨 Yellow Ochre (Gamblin 1980)
• 🟨 Cadmium Yellow (Gamblin 1980)
• 🟥 Cadmium Red Hue (Utrecht Studio)
• 🟥 Alizarin Crimson (Utrecht Studio)
• 🟧 Blush (Gamblin 1980)
• 🟫 Burnt Umber (Utrecht Studio)
• 🟫 Burnt Sienna (Utrecht Studio)
• 🟦 Ultramarine Blue (Utrecht Studio)
• 🟩 Sap Green (Utrecht Studio)