Another one - just a speed painting sketch - the Clydesdale again
Before I worked on the cyclamen, I did a 15-minute watercolor sketch in my sketchbook of the Clydesdale colt. You may be able to see how the paper's buckled, but I enjoy this paint-sketch. I love the way the green shapes his belly and legs, and I love the pattern of the white inroads into the red-brown. The area of green below the belly has edges in the wash that look kind of like pressure ridges, or concussion-wave lines - I'm not sure what to call them - echo lines? Compression waves - that's it!
I don't plan to offer my sketches or speed paintings for sale, but if you love the look of this one, let me know; I might do a bigger watercolor from it. Who knows?
posted by Eileen Hale at
5:30 PM
2 Comments:
Really love your oil painting style! Do you start them similarly to this? By painting the background around their negative shapes? Whatever you're doing, keep it up...a fine blog!
Best wishes, Dean
Thank you so much, Dean! I love your style as well, and your subject matter, so your enjoyment of mine means a great deal to me!
I start my oil paintings - hmmm, where DO I start them? I think it varies. Sometimes I feel like painting in the surrounding helps me get the proportions & perspective better - helps me get my bearings - and I think I did this with the colt and the deer. But I might also start with an outline (that's how the heifer started); and the cyclamen, which I consider to be kind of stumbling along, started in the middle, with one leaf, and added more leaves and background building outward, bit by bit. And sometimes, if I'm feeling really reckless, adventurous and devil-may-care, I might start somewhere in the middle, with an eye or a nose, or a rump (one of my favorite parts), go from there, and see what happens.
With both paintings of the colt, watercolor and oil, I think I started in the same place - with the rear belly and the upper hind legs. And yes, I think I did shape those by painting the background. On the other hand, I think I painted the topline colt-first, rather than background first, on both.
Bottom line, I think, is that I enjoy playing around with it.
I WAS planning to start my PAD's like one of my speed paintings: with a timed 15 minutes to rough in the whole thing, followed by an hour of - leisurely? - development, then a 15 minute sprint at the end, hoping that last chunk would be when I could add or refine details and do some last minute cleaning up and fixing. But, maybe because of my last subject matter (the cyclamen), these time-chunks have started to blend into each other...
P.S. Thank you for the question as well as your praise! I'm a chattery person, and I love the dialog.
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