Recent oil painting from paint my photo pages - Turban fellow

In May I found a nice and interesting photo of an old woman from east Asia at "paint my photo" web pages when I was seeking some photo reference:

https://pmp-art.com/john-warren/gallery/170518/seated-chinese-lady

I began with an unstained canvas with rough charcoal sketch and proceed with a colour transparent wash after I'd sealed it with some spray fixative. After the transparent wash I started to apply paint opaquely with the most difficult area - face, just to get it rolling. Once I was happy with the face (apparently more mannish in my opinion than in the reference) I put some effort in the collar. The rest of the painting leave some space for breathing of that initial wash and I think it helps to keep a main focus on the face. Since I converted a woman to a man I won't try to deceit that so the name of the final painting is Turban Fellow. (I must admit that from very beginning I thought that it is the man) 

 Initial sketch + wash (I put that transparent wash after sealing the drawing with fixative - I think it was pastel fixative)

Turban Fellow (oil on canvas 10x11 inches)

This is one of the few paintings that will make it's way to the party of paintings for sale - Once It's completely dry and in a frame.

Regards, Pete 

Plein-air in June's hot weather

One lovely Saturday - on 17th of June to be precise, I set myself out with my french easel because it was unbearable in my apartment - In England attic apartments lack isolation so in the winter its super cold and in the summer red hot. No worries, at least I'm forced to go out!

It was a sunny afternoon and I was looking for some lovely view of a simple landscape where I would not be burdened with heavy drawings demands - I wanted to avoid any architecture or any geometric shapes because in that case it would be possible that I would not start to put colours at all :-) And the main purpose of painting from life is to observe colours so I wanted to start mixing/putting colours in as soon as possible. 

I set my easel after 2 hours of walking around the landscape near Aberford, which is the rural area of Leeds. I was not satisfied with the view and I had to alternate the shapes to my liking. I made a curvature of the nearby road little bit more stronger and I trimmed some of the trees as well. 

After initial struggle I felt in love with all the colours that the landscape provided me with and I spent lovely 3 hours of painting this piece. 

Aberford Landscape plein air (oil on canvas 11x14 inches)

Have a nice summer you all,  Pete

Italian salesman

Back in winter I found a great reference to paint from. It's from my friend back in Czech Republic Nikola Adlerova, who is a great photographer and she posted the picture on her fB Pages.

FB of Nikola's pages

Here's the photo of an Italian salesman that she took on her trip in Naples:

It is gorgeous, isn't it?

I was especially drawn by the expression of the face so I cropped the image and started with burnt umber underpainting and after that I proceeded with opaque paint starting with darks (more transparent) and finishing up with highlights (put on with palette knife)

step No.1 Burn umber underpainting

Step No. proceeding with colour (from darks to lightest areas)

Italian salesman (Oil on canvas board, 6x8 inches)

It was just a small quick endeavour to have a fun and I hope you can feel it from this little sketch :-)

Pete

Gouache master studies

It has been a year ago since I stumbled across this great video of Jeffery Watts showing his extraordinary skills in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsTAsfjR_uk&t=3979s

On the basis of that video I did a series of studies on a rough watercolour paper in June 2016:

From top left to right bottom - my own character design (it's painstaking to paint from memory - I don't like it too much), Frank Frazetta's destroyer, Barbarian from Deviant art and some old warrior again based on some reference from deviant art.

After one year I decided to revisit this idea in more depth. I think I will continue to do these master studies in the future because it is so helpful in developing the sense of design, brushmanship and so on. I did all tree master studies based on the video. The hardest part I have to admit was to draw the pencil underdrawings. To see all the shapes properly in space and put them right. Skill of drawing is essential really - so If you can, don't trace your subject and draw it free hand like I did. Here's my final takes on those master studies.

Stranik after Watts after Cornwell

Stranik after Watts after Leyendecker

Stranik after Watts after Frazetta

I approached all the laying of the paint in style of tiling as Jeff Watts describes. I watched a chunk of the video for a few minutes, paused and tried to emulate the Jeff's handling of a brush. All of this took me three times more that on the video. 

Keep learning whatever it is guys, Pete

It's been a while

Hello all the good people from the internet,

I have to admit that I've been quite inactive for past few months - I mean blogging wise. I'm at the beginning stage of learning that beautiful craft of painting, art, illustration etc and I strive to get better every possible given time - that is - when I'm not at work. So I train how to draw, move paint around. There's too many topics to master - portrait, landscape, figure, still life. If I train in one realm for a while I can see almost in an instant that I neglect another area - It could be so overwhelming. Nowadays I seldom do my own finished work and if so I have this feeling most of the time that it is not worthy to put on the web - maybe because You can see all the beautiful work from another artists all around the world by just clicking the button. You can see that you have so much to learn ahead of you.

But, I feel that It's helpful to share my personal journey of learning in order to keep pushing, so I have decided that I'll share with you even my study progression and some of my finished work as well. At times, there would be something for sale on my DPW (Dailypaintworks) pages.  

I would be so grateful for your feedback in comments - What do you thing about my work, what would you improve and If you're from Yorkshire area I would be really grateful for suggestion of collaboration if you're a fellow artist for example. We can do an plain-air trip together or to share some knowledge about techniques etc. 

I intend to have my posts shorter and brief to maintain some kind of frequency. At times I'll post just a link to my new instagram endeavours to keep you briefly updated. 

Sorry to be inactive and there's just some bits of training endeavour that I've been working on:

Drawing from life - my sleeping corner (it's quite laborious)

Quick sketch of my "moka" gadget 

These following pictures are master studies of my favourite artists:

Jeff Watts master study

Jeff Watts master study

John Singer Sargent

Kreutz

Joh Singer Sargent

All the well for all of you, Petr

Still life: Pete's essentials

Another try of my painting from life has happened merely 3 months back when it was still quite cold to go outside. I set my self a little still life made of things that I use for cooking the most. Healthy stuff, Isn't it? On the attached pictures you can see my setup in the final stages. Unfortunately in the beginning stages I don't usually feel compelled enough to make some photos because these moments when I don't know what's gonna happen always put a lot of anxiety in to my soul. But briefly - I started on stretched canvas over the drawing board with tape. I Use rolled primed canvas (https://www.jacksonsart.com/jacksons-339g-10oz-universal-primed-cotton-duck-canvas-medium-grain-183cm-width-10m-roll). Than I proceeded with underpainting in this case directly as a colour wash. In this case it is more difficult track your values so I had to be especially conscious about value changes. Afterwards I stared with all the high chroma objects (i.e. yellow pepper, vinegar bottle and tomato) One may start with oil can but I thought that I needed warming up :-) It looked so cumbersome to start with the oil can. Once I gained confidence the finish was quite pleasing process. Only thing that I edited was the background of the picture towards the edges - I made it more darker so that my subject could appear with a more gleaming effect.  

Picture of my setup and a "selfie" with a better expression than at the beginning stages.

Completed thing - Pete's essentials (oil on canvas 9x11 inches)

Why I try to maintain a physical fitness

My regime of my sportsmanships conveys 4days per week of disgusting exercises - Why Do I do that? Basically It's three-fold!

First reason: TIREDNESS

As an artist who always strives to learn more and more artistic stuff I always have a feeling that I don't have enough free time to do my learning. But If I had just a free time and wasn't tired physically I wouldn't be able to concentrate on the process of learning as much as I would want. If you're tired you can relax more and you have a feeling that you deserve your relax time. And because the pure essence of relaxation for me is art it's a good idea to wreck myself with some exercises.

In addition to that reason I would like to mention that I've learnt how to compress my exercise time to a minimum with a same amount of tiredness. The only problem is that is so painfull! :-) It's a usually crossfit kind of training for time with some handstand pushups, pull ups, squats, deadlifts and so on. It takes me usually 20 minutes per session. I have this kind of training twice a week usually on Tuesday and Thursday straight after work. Through out a weekend I have both days a Sprint session in park in Beeston here in Leeds at 5:45 sharp. It's literally 10 minutes of compressed pain which contains 8 bouts of sprint at my top speed (nothing to brag about I think but I have to mention that I always put 100% effort on them)

It always help me to collect some references of facial expression (before and after session :-D ):

 

In the picture at left that's me with my cuppa before session (not so exited) and on the right that's my self-portrait straight after session with endorphins at their best.

Second reason: MY OWN ANATOMY REFERENCE

Since I believe that for maintaining an optimal body composition it's wise to look in the mirror instead on the scale I took photos of me in the mirror to evaluate the hard work and to see If I'm able to maintain solid shape - I know it is somehow narcissistic but it is way more accurate that a scale trust me.

But that's not a point. These images provide me a great learning tools for anatomy of a human figure. Some of the studies are shown down below:

Third reason: I CAN EAT MORE! (I know - not art related)

I don't eat junk food and I eat considerably low carb diet so I know that If I want to binge on carbs, I have to deserve them. I think only appropriate time for carbs is post exercise and that is the time when I have my high healthy non simple sugar home baked sweet potato pancake with some yogurt, strawberries and nuts on top. For sweetening everything up I usually use stevia powder.  

If you would be interested for exact recipe for this pancake give me a shout! Here's the picture of the final product down below. It doesn't look so great because there's a loads of cinnamon and cocoa powder on top but trust me it's gorgeous! Maybe I'll do a still life in the future from the ingredients of that pancake - I think that would look alright - strawberries, sweet potato, eggs, yogurt in some nice glass jar... What do you think?

My sweet potato pancake with some heavenly stuff on top...(caution! - only allowed after exercise)

Have a blast all of you,

Best regards Pete!