I don’t typically plan much when I paint – I prefer just finding a reference or concept, throwing some textured paper onto my easel, and diving right in. However, I was given some large canvasses, and so I started thinking about what I might want to do with them. My go-to painting surfaces are 12″ x 12″ or 9″ x
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I’m currently experiencing an internal struggle with the start of my process. Most artists I follow start their oil paintings with a background wash or base layer of color, which helps eliminate the bright white from their canvass or paper and potentially makes blending easier. But, for most of my 240ish oil paintings, I have started my loose outline without
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The subject of this post is another figure study 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
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The subject of this post is another figure study 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
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My latest painting is another figure study on 12 x 12 oil paper. With this one, I tried to really emphasize a bright light source behind the subject. I think I was able to accomplish this for the most part, but I can see it’s something I need to practice a bit more. I’ll follow my standard format here, which
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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. This post will include a static image of the piece, an embed of the time lapse video, and then some verbiage from when I wrote about the painting on social media at
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It’s kind of interesting to look back at this portrait. It was my 49th oil painting, which at the time of writing this, was 64 paintings ago. It’s kind of wild to think I’m that far behind in blogging – this was done in February, and I’ve painted more in the time since then than I had in total when
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I’m so incredibly far behind now in sharing paintings, and it seems like there’s not much I can do to address it. I’ve tried batching multiple into one post, and I’ve tried simplifying my posts as well. But it just seems I am vastly more interested in painting than I am blogging. Not really a problem exactly – I am
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Around the time of this painting, I was thinking about how often I paint similar things. As you can tell from a quite browse of this site, I pretty consistently share head and shoulders portraits of people. Occasionally, I’ll branch out into a figure study, a pet, or even a rare landscape. But usually, I practice similar styles and types
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This painting of a woman in a dark room is another portrait study in my efforts to practice specific areas that aren’t my strongest. There are a few aspects of portrait painting that come to mind, but one in particular goes back even to my colored pencil days. I’ve talking about this before in more depth, but for a long
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It might be sort of weird how I’m phrasing this title – a “Jon Amdall Self Portrait”…painted by Jon Amdall…written by Jon Amdall. That’s a lot of weird third person references. But, since it’s the latest painting I’ve done of myself, and I’d kind of like to index this thing and let search engines pick it up, I figured I’d
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When I started this painting, I had some vague notions of treating it sort of like a capstone project. Although I’ve done over 80 paintings now, at the point in time when I painted this one, I had done somewhere in the mid-40s. I really felt like I was starting to get into the groove of things, and was seeing
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I might say this too often, but the oil painting featured in this post seems to represent somewhat of a milestone for me. It’s of a lady with sunflowers behind her, and is another attempt at a partial figure study rather than the usual head-and-shoulders portrait I tend to roll with. It’s noteworthy to me because right around this time,
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The subject of this post is an oil painting I did of my all-time favorite musician Mike Patton. Patton is a man of many bands and projects, including Faith No More, Mr. Bungle, Fantomas, Tomahawk, and quite a few more. I’ve drawn him in colored pencil a couple of times, and in those posts I discuss why I like his
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