Going back in time to March 2023, here is an oil painting I did around that time based on when it was shared to the Amdall Gallery Instagram. It included a collection of game characters, including Link, Zelda, Pikachu, Tom Nook, and Minecraft Steve. This post will include a static image of the piece, an embed of the time lapse
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I’ve mentioned on a few blog posts over the last few months how far behind I am sharing artwork. This has been a continuously building situation since I started painting in October – but I’m not sure I could say it’s necessarily a terrible thing. I’ll explain what I mean by that, but first I want to give some more
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In this post, I want to take a step back and compare the different types of art videos I’ve shared on the YouTube channel. Basically, comparing art video time-lapse lengths and styles. I’ve really been making an effort over the last couple of months to get some varied content onto the channel. And one of the motivating questions at the
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This post is basically about how far behind I am on blogging. I came across a great quote from the artist Richard Schmid who said to “paint like a pig eats.” Well, I have been doing exactly that over the last couple of months. I counted all of my paintings to this point, and to my great surprise, I’ve done
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This post is centered around an oil painting of a character from Elden Ring named Melina, who acts as a guide for the player during the course of the game. She’s a fascinating and mysterious character in one of the best games I’ve ever played. But, since I’ve already discussed the game itself in great detail through four previous posts,
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My painting journey has taken a learning-oriented turn towards trying to abandon some of my most loved crutches. The most significant of these crutches has been using pencil to sketch outlines before painting, which is how I got my feet under me with the first dozen paintings. But recently, I decided if I wanted to truly develop my skills, I’d
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Buried at the end of my last post, I posed the question, “How do you digitize your artwork?” I embedded a crowdsignal poll with some options that came to mind, which actually represent things I’ve considered. Since I started back into the art hobby about five years ago, I’ve been taking photos of portraits using my smartphone. As the years
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The next artwork in my recent parade of oil paintings takes us back to the topic of video games, which is not an unusual one for me. However, this time I’ve painted something related to the Dragon Age series, which hasn’t been a topic of any of my fan art that I can recall. This one is of Morrigan, the
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As I discussed in my last post, I’m making an effort to push myself more when it comes to artwork. A huge part of that obviously is trying oil painting for the first time around two months ago. But I am also trying to flex some artistic muscles that I haven’t used much. I described this in some depth already;
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A couple of specific things are at the forefront of my mind right now when it comes to painting. The first is that, in a general sense, I need lots of practice. Over the course of around five years and 150ish portraits, my colored pencil drawings improved noticeably. I can see major areas where my painting skills need to develop,
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With my 9th painting, I ran into a bit of a conundrum and drove home a good lesson for myself. To this point, I feel like I had shown a pretty steady improvement in my paintings. They certainly weren’t masterpieces, but I was encouraged by the practice showing tangible results. The other side of this coin though is the fact
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As I continue on clearing my backlog of paintings that have yet to be shared, now I’ve come to the fourth of five paintings done during a holiday weekend in October. This one in particular was focused on really pushing for a high contrast/heavy shadow challenge. Last year, I did a colored pencil sketch of some characters from the movie
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One of the many unexpected questions that arose as I started learning to paint was, what do I do with extra paint on my palette when I’m finished? I’m about 10 paintings into it now, and I still don’t have a great sense of how much paint I’ll need. But that was especially true with the first few paintings –
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As with my original post from a few years ago, I am once again a bit late in writing about Stranger Things. This time though, when it comes to Season 4, at least I’m only a couple of months behind the actual release and pop culture/meme frenzy. As I’ve previously discussed, I am a huge fan of Stranger Things. I
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I’ve finally beaten Elden Ring, which feels like quite a milestone for someone who isn’t a particularly skilled gamer (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve accidentally rolled myself off a cliff). Since I’ve finally beaten the final boss, or really “bosses” to be more accurate, it’s given me some space to reflect on the full experience Elden Ring
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