An attempt at Fauvism

The latest school assignment presented quite a challenge. Apart from the studying, we were supposed to paint in Fauvist style. Reading about the movement itself, it is hard to find much about how the artists painted, other than that they wanted to experiment with colours. I did my best to study different paintings, and artists, but at first, the only common denomination seemed to be strong colours, often slightly skewed, or a lot of orange and yellow and red. Eventually I figured I had to try and paint anyway. With the latter half of Jim Dale's reading of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", I set about looking at a great number of paintings, and then to paint. I decided on the fairly, for me, unusual, and also interesting, subject of a prancing horse.
I began by sketching, with blue-black acrylics, the horse, and then simply set about painting. It was done on the paper block I purchased before, and with rounded brushes, mostly; also some was done with the feather brush I am now eagerly trying out at every opportunity, and the two small round brushes I use. It took me but one sitting to paint it, with a few pauses.
Perhaps I should have been using clearer paints, but after a few layers, and a lot of concentration and some more looking at other paintings, I think I figured out most of it. Exaggerated colours and clearly delineated areas seemed to do the trick, and at a distance it really looks good. So despite its shortcomings, I feel I managed to do the assignment mostly justice.

I feel proud that at least I, myself, can see my skills improving! I look forward to the next challenge.

Sunflower or blue iris

Out of the titular two, I chose the blue iris. I want the painting process to be filled with joy and satisfaction, and trying to paint a sunflower didn't catch my fancy. Also, there is something about them that can have me stare and look and think and ponder for hours. And yet another thing; I went to the Imperial Garden in the Meiji jingu park in Tokyo in very, very early spring, and the pond there fills up with blue iris in the summer. I've always wanted to go back and see it.

Said and done, then. I found myself a reference (despite having quitely resolved to try and NOT use reference for once, but it was a good thing I did), and set out to paint. I chose a real canvas this time, which felt exhilarating and exciting, although I felt silly feeling that - but there really is a difference between painting on a canvas board and a proper, stretched onto a frame, canvas. I started out drawing the outlines, of the flower and the leaves around it, with an HB pencil again. It was fairly straightforward.
When I started painting, I originally went with too much pink in the blend, so it turned out a wee bit too purple. I used this to good effect, however, on some areas of the flower, as they really were a lot more purple than blue. Mostly, I used Prussian Blu, but also Ultramarine Blue. I added a bit of Cadmium Red, and in fact also a pinkish red whose name escapes me - possibly Alizarin Crimson? For the yellow I looked no further than my Cadmium Yellow, which was also a key ingredient for the green.
The colours in the painting tied in really well. The blue in the iris, with a dash of red, and then the near-purple of the spots. The pure yellow didn't feel out of place because of my simply blending it and the blues I used, for the green in the background (well, I did cheat a bit here, I think I used some Viridian or Sap Green too, but mostly I blended the greens myself). And the white goes a bit of everywhere, where it is needed.
And here it is. I think I captured the vibrancy of the colours fairly well with the camera this time, but it's going to be interesting to see it fully dry! Here, it's been drying for a week. I painted it in, well, several hours, but mostly during two days. Started in the middle of the night and went up early to continue. I couldn't resist it!
I think I could have taken a bit less of a look on the reference photo - it's a very good likeness, but I should have thought for myself, too, to make it look more "real". As it is, some areas of the flower look almost flat, though I know that in reality they aren't - of course. Again, I used a lot of blending. It's really one of my favourite ways of making things look smooth... Pity I'm not better at it, when it comes to watercolours! But I'll get to that in time, I suppose. In real life, the painting gets a bit of texture from my using a fairly thick layer just about everywhere, but it is especially apparent with the yellow areas. They do look a bit knobbly, just as they should. I mostly used flat brushes, and preferably with a bit longer hairs. I'm thinking of getting a "fan" or "feather" brush, since I think it'd be interesting to try and paint with.
Once again, I'm very happy with this, and I hope I'm have some nice spot on a wall to hang it!

Colour-study of an apple

This art blog has been mercifully free of still lives, but this time I came pretty close. The assignment had to do with colour constancy and what we expect to see for a colour, and what colour is really there. I rolled up a paper into a small tube, and took it for a help while painting an apple.
Again, oil colours were used as a medium, with the help of some odourless paint cleaner and thinner-thingumajing. I worked on my favourite the F3 canvas board, and used a red apple on white-ish fabric for a subject.
The thing I found most tricky were the spots of highlight - they changed depending on light-source, of course, and looks very strong in the picture.

To my defence I'd like to say that I have since the photo was taken, gone over them a bit with a brush, so that they are now a lot less stark white and look much better. The real apple was moved from where I painted it, to where I took the photo, hence the differences in light and perspective and all. All in all it was a good excercise. It was particularily interesting to try and incorporate the shine caused by the bright cloth underneath, to work with uneven shadows, and to figure out how much blue versus yellow was needed for the not entirely pure red areas. But I've always had it easy with the yellow-to-red part of the colour spectrum, so it wasn't very hard to do this.
I might redo this, with an orange or something, and perhaps a blue cloth or something, just to give me a bit of a challenge (blue and orange being opposites on a colour wheel).
Pity, again, that the picture made the granulated canvas board look really odd, but oh well.