J Dunster Art Blog – Oil Painting, Portraits, and Cats
Figurative art, oil & acrylic painting, figure drawing, and cat portraits
I liked the expression on this model, and the colors in the skin, so thought it would be an interesting study!
The color scheme in this painting seemed to be predominately green, and peach. I like this color combo and had a lot of fun mixing the colors. Continue reading “Windswept”
And here is a post where I will rhapsodize about art materials.
But first, about the painting of the day, “Pretty & Fluffy Kitty.” Continue reading “Pretty & Fluffy Kitty”
Annnnnd . . . it’s another cat head! I love painting the cat heads, as if that wasn’t already abundantly clear!
I’ve found a rich source of cat head references, at PaintMyPhoto. Fellow PaintMyPhoto member Inge Dagmar Manders has generously provided several lovely photos of her kitties, and this is (I believe) the second photo of hers that I’ve used as reference for a painting. This is of her cat “Rocky.” He appears, at least in this pose, to be the epitome of innocence, with beautiful aqua eyes and a sincere look. Very likely Inge has a different opinion of him, knowing how cats will be!
What I loved about this kitty was the abundance of colors found in the fur. Warm and cool, pinks in the ears, around the nose and mouth. Blues and warm grays elsewhere, battling for attention, shaping the structure of the cat’s head. All wonderful stuff, I love it!
I painted this on a SourceTek panel (which you can buy at canvaspanels.com). Portrait-weave, oil-primed linen on Baltic Birch. What’s not to love? And love it I do! I have a lot of SourceTek panels stockpiled!
This is a first for my blog, and I feel a bit geeky about it. I’m posting this from my studio! I have a nice computer set up here ($100 used Mac Mini–who says that these older computers are obsolete?) and have finally configured it to upload files to my site, scan and edit artwork in Photoshop, read photos from my digital camera, and the whole bit.
Anyway, back to the painting. I’ve fussed with this one for a few days and have to say I’ve very much enjoyed the process. The reference photo used had some lovely skin tones—warm and cool, subtle shifts in color, and a calm, and beautiful expression on the model’s face.
I’m also trying to paint a little more boldly and thickly, though I guess it’s not enough yet to be obvious in the painting itself.
I used a DickBlick linen panel for this painting. I haven’t used this brand of panel before, but I have to say I enjoyed it. There’s something about the texture of linen, and I’ve really warmed to it. This is one of the Blick’s “high end” line of panels, I assume meant to compete with brands like Fredrix’s archival linen panels. I like both brands and will pick whichever is on sale!
This is a “put a fork in it, it is done” painting. I do like it, but I also think there comes a point where if you pick at something too much, you ruin it. I think I’ve reached that point.
I actually started this painting a few months ago, for a Valentine’s Day painting challenge (we had to do a painting with a “hidden heart” in it somewhere). I returned to tweak a few more things on it just a few days ago. And now I think it’s time to call it done, even though, as always, I see things that I would like to tweak some more. But there’s a limit, right? And it’s time to move on. Right? 😉
It does seem like I do a lot of paintings of Jason Aaron Baca. And I do! He is awesome. He’s a highly popular figure on DeviantArt.com, where he has a plethora of reference (“stock”) photos available for artists to use. I have been collecting these photos for a long time now and am on a roll, doing a series of paintings from some of them. I love the drama of some of the shots!
The painting is on 9×12″ linen panel, by Fredrix. It’s classified as “archival” (meaning it is durable and won’t fall apart before its time). Fredrix has archival boards available in linen as well as cotton, and the linen ones have the option of being primed with either acrylic or oil-based primer. This painting was primed with acrylic, if memory serves.
There’s something quite sublime about the texture of linen, I can’t describe it exactly, but I like it very much. I’ve stockpiled quite a few of these boards for future use.