Amdall Gallery

I think some of my best paintings come from a very loose approach and relaxed mindset. I can’t always achieve that, but I love when it does come together like that. In this piece, I really wanted to explore some bright and interesting color mixing, pushing on yellows and greens and light reflecting through windows. It was fun to paint and the result was satisfying.

This post is all about this figure study, 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.

This portrait really had me thinking about how I organize my palette – dark colors like umbers, sienna, and blue on the left, and lighter ones like titanium white, ochre, and reds on the right side. The painting time lapse on screen is one that fits with a conversation about colors. It’s an extremely vibrant portrait where I let myself get loose and experiment with some bright and vivid yellow and green mixes. I had some fun with this one for sure! The discussion video really centered around colors and I took the opportunity to add a quick tour of how I arrange the paints now.

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 is my 237th total oil painting, and was a lot more improvisational than most of the pieces I create. I can tell when I look at this one compared to others that it takes on a looseness that’s somewhat unique for me, which I really like. This is hard for me – to be so freely flowing. But maybe I can work on that in 2025. 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).