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Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Progress Report 1/22/14 - Painting Away The Blues?

Been a bummer week. Not sure why. Feel really down and not motivated to do much. Spent some time playing Kemet with folks. That was fun. Missing my regular Bloodbowl action. Need the gaming as a regular fix in my life!! The sporadic RPG gaming is not cutting it. Hopefully I can find a way to make it happen.

Just 18 days until Dog Bowl II, the local Kalamazoo BB tournament I run with Furry, in theory sponsored by our nearly non-existent league. Looking forward to that! This year we went with a different format for the rules which really amps up the chance for a Tier 2 or Tier 3 team to win the whole thing. It also screws over Dwarf coaches which I am FINE with.

Haven't painted much. Slowly working on Necro models. Slow like "I painted a basecoat on this one model's pants today and it was sloppy and I have to do touch ups" slow. I have had two oil painting classes now at the local art institute. I like my teacher but the class so far has not met my expectations. First session was spent in aimless conversation about painting techniques I didn't have experience with. I then spent about 35 minutes of the 2 and a half hour class getting a bit of black on the canvas. It looked like this when I was done.


I am working in the under painting oil style. The idea is to paint a basically finished piece in just one color range then paint over that with more paint. It is a way to bring a lot of color to the canvas without having to fix lots of mistakes. Obviously it takes longer but I don't mind the practice... I just wish I knew what I was doing! You might not be able to tell from the image but that is a big canvas. So far that is my biggest (har har) challenge, using my painting techniques and brush control on a larger surface, and not dragging my hand around in the paint.

My second class was pretty much an exercise in frustration as my instructor left after about 30 minutes as he wasn't feeling well. That left me alone with my own incompetance and inexperience for the next 2 hours. I managed to get this much done...


Finished getting the outline in first. I kinda like it this way of course it is nowhere near finished.


Next up I started adding more tones to the jacket. Having a bit of a hard time working with my palette and getting all of the different values to stay mixed the way I want. 


Before I left I made myself tackle a bit of tone on the hand. Still scared to start on the face but I will give it a go next week I suppose! 

So far the experience of oil painting has been one that still interests me but much like the early days of painting miniatures I feel like I have so much to learn before I will be "okay" with my results.

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