Lady with a Flowery Hat — Limited Palette

April 25, 2012January 9, 2016 J R DunsterLeave a comment

Recently I decided to enter a Jerry’s Artarama art contest. I had nothing to lose, and if I won, I’d get a gift certificate for Jerry’s. Since I am officially an art materials junkie, this sounded very appealing!

The challenge was to use specific art materials. For the contest I entered, it was Jerry’s “house brand” of Soho oil paints. Soho is student grade, and very affordable. I had already bought a set of Soho Oils (because I’m an art materials junkie, remember?) so I proceeded to do two paintings using these paints.

I won’t lie, I love my artist-grade oil paints, but this challenge was a lot of fun and I’m glad I undertook it.

6×8 inches on Pintura Painting Panel, using Soho Oil Paint brand. Limited palette of Titanium White, Light Red, Ultramarine Blue, and Prussian Blue. (Another painting where I used no model or reference.)

Well, I got the news a few days ago, I got an honorable mention. So that means a nice little gift certificate for Jerry’s, which was of course, the whole point! 😉

Native American guy in profile — 5 x 7 inch oil sketch

April 24, 2012January 9, 2016 J R DunsterLeave a comment

A little oil painting I did one evening. He looks kind of grumpy! I didn’t intend that. I just started painting (no photo or model to look at) and he just turned out that way. I think I may want to tweak it a bit more. But here it is.

5×7″ oil sketch, on linen board.

drawings · figures & nudes

Conte Crayon figure drawing (nudity)

April 24, 2012July 15, 2015 J R DunsterLeave a comment

I found this old newsprint sketchpad from a figure drawing class I’d attended years ago at Glendale College. The paper was in pretty bad shape, but I took photos and tried to Photoshop some of the sketches into something presentable. Here’s my favorite of the bunch:

I am a big believer that every artist, especially those who are going to draw and paint representationally (not abstracts) should take some figure drawing classes. There’s nothing quite so humbling and challenging as drawing the figure from life.

Works in Progress

WIP 4 x 4 inch painting (work in progress)

April 24, 2012February 7, 2016 J R DunsterLeave a comment

This is a small little oil sketch that still awaits completion. It’s a little face I made up from my imagination. (I do that frequently.) I used a lot of Blockx Ultramarine Light Oil Color in this, and I think I seriously love this color.

Notice all the texture of the brush strokes in the painting! I hope to make them look less haphazard when I finish the painting.

drawings · portraits

Cowboy pencil sketch

April 24, 2012January 8, 2016 J R DunsterLeave a comment

A cowboy drawing from my sketchbook. I was watching a TV show where this guy had this great black cowboy hat, and so I tried to draw it (the hat, and also the guy wearing the hat). The drawing doesn’t look anything like the guy on TV, but it was still a lot of fun to do such a sketch, and it’s my firm belief that such sketching keeps our skills sharp!

Okay, so I didn’t make the cowboy hat black, like in the original. But I know that it’s supposed to be black, see? 😉

I think I might make this into a little oil painting someday.