J Dunster Art Blog – Oil Painting, Portraits, and Cats
Figurative art, oil & acrylic painting, figure drawing, and cat portraits
An interesting little story behind this painting.
I had a simultaneously fun, exhausting, and crazy evening (and night, and morning!) at the studio yesterday. I was visiting with a fellow artist, we were yakking about art, doing some painting, just having fun, and some circumstances were created which made it necessary for us to both stay overnight at the studio. (It’s a long story. Continue reading “THE HEAD”
Here are two “new” paintings that are actually old paintings that I finally decided to finish up and post online!
I liked this very simple cat portrait—just the silhouette, with a little light touching the sides of the body, and the tip of the tail. It’s that tip of the tail that really catches my eye. I fussed with this painting off and on, and finally decided that simple was best, put a fork in it, it is done!
This second painting is a portrait of fellow artist Pavina. She sometimes models for our art / drawing groups, and during some of these modeling sessions I took a series of photos of her. This little oil sketch uses one of these photos. Continue reading “Cat in Silhouette & Pink Ribbon”
I started this painting several months ago. I kept on picking at it and picking at it, then put it away. Finally I decided to finish it, once and for all!
Rose is a model for one of the local drawing groups I attend. Continue reading “Rose of Iceland”
Another exploration of cold and warm light playing on the face. I used a full-body stock photo as reference, and had to really zoooom in on the face, but there was a lot of fascinating information in the flesh tones! There’s also a bit of drama in the lighting as well. I found there were subtle pale blues in the highlighted side of the man’s face, and some warm burgundies and purples contained within the shadows. I left the collar and hair very loosely rendered, because I was most interested in the colors of the flesh.
It’s painted on Gessobord, a favorite “guilty pleasure” painting panel. I keep obsessively collecting Gessobord. It’s a hardboard panel with a wonderful, smooth eggshell-textured white coat of acrylic primer on top. I love this painting surface but try to control myself and don’t use it all the time!
It’s pitiful that I haven’t updated this blog in all of this month. So I’m trying to slip something in, right under the wire!
I haven’t done as much as I’d like, but still, I have done some painting. I just haven’t posted it. There are some commissions in the works (will post them later) and other stuff. I had some busy-work in other areas that kept me from posting to this blog as much as I’d like. I hope to correct that now!
Here’s a Work in Progress. It’s almost done, but still needs a few tweaks and corrections. It is not done—emphasis on NOT DONE!
The thing that fascinated me about this portrait was the wonderful play of warm and cool on this woman’s face. Continue reading “Just because I didn’t want to have NO posts in March!”
I feel bad for neglecting the blog for a little over a month! But I was waiting for my “big announcement.” And that is, I am now being represented by a fairly prestigious online gallery, UGallery. I learned that I was accepted to the gallery a few weeks ago, but it took a while to get everything set up and actually have my art go “live” on the site. I wanted to wait until it was all a done deal before announcing it.
They say that about 10-15% of artists who apply to UGallery get in, so I’m flattered to be among those accepted. But I must take into account that any gallery, anywhere, has an idea of what niches they want to fill, and so if they don’t accept every interested artist, that doesn’t necessarily mean that the rejected artists are “bad.”
My first day on the site was this past Thursday, and I was greeted on the main page with a graphic containing my cat paintings! Squee! Yes, I have no shame, I took a screenshot of it:
To any fellow artists who may have questions about UGallery, I have only been with them for a short time, so I can’t say much yet. Other than they seem to be detail-oriented (that is a good thing), friendly, and attentive to artists. Continue reading “New Paintings, New News!”
Some more experimenting with water mixable oils (WMOs).
My previous post showed a work in progress oil sketch where I used a combination of several brands of water mixables (mostly Weber wOil, with a touch or two from Talens Cobra, Lukas Berlin, and Holbein Duo Aqua). I used wOil’s Alkyd “Fast Dry” medium. Continue reading “More with Water Mixable Oil Paints (mini tutorial II)”
Oy. My current schedule has not been conducive to painting and it’s very frustrating. But hopefully it will be back to “normal” (what qualifies as that for me!) soon.
I haven’t been able to spend much time at my studio, so I set up a very humble corner at home where I could paint. But painting with solvents (like paint thinner) was a no-go, so I thought I’d break out some water mixable oils I had, and see what I could do. I’ve done two paintings so far, neither finished, and I post the more “finished” looking of the two. It’s just a simple oil sketch of one of my made-up people (no model or photo reference). It needs more tweaking, which I’ll do as soon as it dries.
MY IMPRESSION OF WATER MIXABLE OILS:
Right now the main advantage I see with water-mixables (also known as “WMOs”) Continue reading “Mini-Tutorial: Experiments in Water Mixable Oils”
This little grey kitty was spontaneously painted on a 4×4″ panel I had lying around. He has such clear eyes, such a sincere expression, what’s not to love?
The panel I used was primed with lead primer (don’t worry, it’s perfectly safe unless you start chewing on the edges!) which is especially wonderful to paint upon. The paint slides over the surface in a unique way that is just . . . so sublime. The primer I used was Holbein’s “Foundation” oil color, I believe the umber-tinted one. I love Holbein’s foundation line, which includes a white, a grey, a sage green, and a beige (tinted with umber).
I like painting on small panels sometimes because less is more, and usually it can be done (or almost done, in this case) in one sitting! It gives you a feeling of accomplishment to do a new painting almost every day, right?
This painting has been simmering on the backburner for about a month. I set it aside after doing the first stage, worked on some other paintings for a while, and finally decided to complete it.
The green background (grass and foliage) gave a green cast to the cat’s fur. Quite a challenge! Without the background color of grass green, the colors bouncing off the kitty would not make any sense! This is a beautiful tortoiseshell/calico kitty with clear, green eyes that reflect the green of the background.
This painting was the one that caused the damage to The Brush. I have a favorite paintbrush, entitled “The Brush” because it is THE go-to brush that I grab often during my painting. It was so loved, so relied on, so adored, that its beautiful handle snapped off in my hand as I was working on “Cat in the Grass.” There’s still enough of a handle left so I can continue to use it, but it’s also starting to show wear elsewhere. (I guess I am hard on The Brush. I do wash my brushes religiously, but I guess something about how I use The Brush is contributing to its gradual demise.)
The Brush is probably just a simple sable Bright (size 6) but I have bonded with this specific, particular brand of brush, so I’m afraid to deviate to any other type, because maybe it’s not quite like The Brush. My source for The Brush is The Italian Art store, their own label (which I’m sure is actually made by some other brush maker and stamped with The Italian Art Store’s name). So since I am hard on The Brush, I must order duplicate The Brushes, so I am never without a supply!