Amdall Gallery

Almost from the start of my quest to learn to paint with oils, I’ve been captivated by expressive eyes in portraits. It’s something I’m drawn to just when I’m admiring paintings by other artists, so I naturally gravitated to wanting to learn how to emulate the same effect. Unfortunately for me perhaps, I learned quickly that it requires a subtle touch and more experience than I had in the first year. But like with many things, practice is the prescription for that ailment! As I kept painting, in my second year (mostly 2024) I was occasionally able to apply the right mix of subtle brush strokes to get what I was looking for. I can’t always get the brush to do what I want it to, but I’m finding I can more often as I continue to gain experience.

This post is a bit of a catch-up/throw back to a figure study I did almost exactly a year ago. This piece was actually done when I had the flu, so I was definitely less focused and painted more loosely because my body wouldn’t give my brain the energy it needed to overthink things. This study was painted on 12 x 12 oil paper. I’ll follow my standard format here, which is to share an image of the painting, the Instagram time lapse, and some verbiage specific to the piece. Then, I’ll embed the YouTube discussion video, including another brief writeup on the topic, materials used, and some other hopefully useful information. I’ll wrap the post up by sharing the YT Shorts time lapse and some other similar painting videos.

After painting this one, I got to thinking about about the concept of capstone paintings – attempting to implement everything you’ve learned, practiced, or emphasized into one piece. I already mentioned the focus on expressive eyes, but there were some other concepts I was very interested in at the time (which are still focuses even now as we start 2025). These points of emphasis are: 1) figure studies, 2) expressive eyes, and 3) more interesting colors. Most paintings I’ve done in the year since have involved intentional practice of at least one of those concepts. With this painting, I didn’t set out to incorporate all three – as I mentioned, I had the flu at the time, and wasn’t really in the right state of mind for planning. Although it may not be true for everyone, for me at least, I think the mental and psychological aspects of making art are important. I believe this relaxed mindset helped me achieve a better result with all three objectives.

Here are the details of the discussion video I shared on YouTube, including materials used and some other information. I’ll also embed the Shorts video, although it’s kind of redundant to the Instagram Reels post, as I typically just share the same edited vertical time lapse on both platforms.

The portrait was my 184th total oil painting, which feels like a quite a long ways away as I sit here having just finished the 240th piece a year later. It still really holds up for me though, which is one of the reasons why I decided to share it on the website in addition to the usual social media. The video discussion I’ve embedded is about 5 minutes, and is similar to some of the others I’ve done (also linked after the timestamps).