Amdall Gallery

It’s hard to believe it’s already been three years since I started learning to paint! I first picked up a brush back in September 2022, and since then I’ve painted 260 portraits. Although my pace has slowed considerably from that somewhat insane first year pace (averaging more than 10 a month), I’m glad I’ve continued to steadily continue this hobby. The fact that I paint alla prima and finish most of them in one session really helps – it keeps subjects fresh and lets me get more repetitions on certain things I want to practice.

The featured painting in this post seems like a good way to celebrate that 3 year painting anniversary, as it brings together a couple of concepts that I’ve found tricky – painting shadows and subject reflections in a mirror. I think I was finally able to achieve a result I like with this piece, implementing both concepts together. A nice way to celebrate this milestone! This portrait study was painted on 12 X 12 oil paper and was my 260th overall. 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 I finish a painting, I don’t usually dwell too much on it since my mind has likely moved on to the next project or idea. But since this piece is more significant as it lines up with a milestone, I found myself thinking about it more afterwards, and wondering how it compared to the other yearly milestones. I went back through my historical paintings to find some good comparisons, which was a bit more difficult than I thought it was going to be. I actually designed an artwork inventory app that I use to keep track of things, so browsing yearly paintings in September wasn’t difficult. However, I didn’t paint much that month in 2024, and the limited pieces I did weren’t ones I like. So I had to lean slightly into October there. Anyhow, I included a timeline below that I think shows the progression and perhaps how my paintings have evolved.

It’s interesting that my own particular style and look does show through in all of these paintings, but definitely still develops and changes over time. I’m honestly not entirely sure how to describe my own painting style (especially difficult since I don’t have any formal art training). But maybe you could call it “muddy quasi-impressionism” or something like that. I actually tried to ask ChatGPT to describe my art style and it gave much more information than I was expecting, calling it “impressionistic realism, with visible looseness in brush strokes, a focus on how light falls, color interactions, and sometimes softer edges. Realism with painterly nuance.” Regardless, I do think there has always been a significant brown-beige component (the muddiness I mentioned) that has carried forward over time.

Because I’m a sucker for data, I do keep track of all of these paintings in the app I built. It includes the dates of course, but also financial tracking (if it was a commission), subjects, mediums, sizes, and all the other interesting data points I might want to make a chart about. I could resist sharing the “paintings over time” chart, since I’ve been talking about the last three years of learning to paint. As I mentioned at the top, my pace has clearly slowed significantly. But I like to think my attention to detail and conscientiousness has at least increased slightly. So, as I said, the style is still similar and I think carries through…but hopefully composition is better.

Enough data, now let’s get to some videos. As usual, I’ll embed the longer YouTube discussion first. Then I’ll include some relevant details along with the very quick time lapses.

Some other topics explored in the embedded video: This one features a discussion of some of what I’ve already mentioned here. Themes like changes over the last three years, but also some specifics on concepts I’ve had difficulty successfully capturing in a painting, like realistic shadows and logical mirror’s reflections. I feel like this painting got to both of those concepts much better than previous attempts, making it a great way to bring together the last three years.

Here are some additional details of the 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 main video I’ve embedded is around the usual amount, and is similar in format and presentation to some of the others I’ve done (also linked after the timestamps).

Maybe a bit redundant with the YouTube video embedded, but thought I’d also try WordPress’ VideoPress functionality to see how it handles large 4K/HD uploads. Here’s the full version of my conversation about this three year anniversary of my starting this oil painting portraiture hobby – it includes all the discussion I mentioned above about my goals with shadows and reflections.