In a painting swamp right now
...and loving it!
My dearest subscribers,
I have been late with my weekly Sunday post, because I am in a painting swamp. I am kind of obsessed with oil pastels right now and am spending every possible minute painting with them.
Or making a folder with references of collected photographs to paint, or taking pictures of my creations, or arranging them in potential sticker sheets. Or making small videos to post about them…. Generally documenting my process, cos I love seeing the progress.
So yeah, this time away from the screen became kind of priceless for me, as in my day jobs I am dependent on computers, laptops, tablets and online softwares. Oh and zoom.
While I have tons of ideas what to write about, that means that I will have to sit down in front of the screen… and then I feel like I rather want to paint with my oil pastels…
You know, I even ordered more! And I started to ask people I know for beautiful reference photos that I can practice on.
In case you have a beautiful picture and want to share it with me, so I can paint it, feel free to do that & I will share the final outcome with you of course as well & send you a picture of it!
So now, this means, today I will write about my recent painting process and share some pieces with you. And my thoughts behind, and the developments I feel that are happening.
I am not so sure how to do that best, if I should focus on one piece and how I develop it, or share the whole process with several of them?…
What I can tell you is, that oil pastels are a mess :D, they are difficult to control, very smudgy & easy to smear around by accident.
Yet, they have a certain charm and addictiveness about them, precisely because of these same reasons: they are perfect to let go of control and just trust the process.
I started out with basic Faber Castell oil pastels to try them out, this was the outcome, very basic, very unsatisfying and quite frankly, not very beautiful:
Strangely enough, these tries hooked me on them; I like the meadow the most, so I decided to paint things I love and try to see if I can improve.
Next up a nature reference, where I took a photo of Cloudberries, growing here i nthe North of Sweden. I decided to try the whole scenery: meh. Then I extracted the plant itself: yay! & then an abstract version of it: meh. Here they are:
What I found out is, that I like to sketch the outline of the object first, very rough, with a black brush pen (the middle example), so I wanted to expand on that & decided to pick objects I really like: my own earrings & jewelry, here we go:
Next up, I decided to try a landscape again, one that is less busy & has nice colors & I got going at it with also outlining with black ink. Here you can see the whoel process of how I went about it: first a graphite sketch, then rough colors, here I used watercolor pencils, then more details, then black ink sketches, then watercolor brush pens & then the first oil pastel layers, continuing until I was happy:
I was afraid to mess it up & also to waste my oil pastels, so I decided to pre-color the piece before to make sure to ease into the process. And al lthis kind of hooked me into this medium.
By that time I already got some more professional oil pastels from Sennelier and the difference is HUGE! Insane, and it makes the whole creation process so much more enjoyable.
I am also slowly learning to let go & not be precious about my art supplies, after all: if I create beauties like that, its all worth it! here a close up:
Soooo, I got hooked on landscapes & plants and decided to continue exploring them. Next one was a close up of a bumble bee and a lupine and so far, one of my favorites. While painting it, I realized I had no purples… I tried to mix & blend them on the paper & it kind of worked… but not really…
So I ordered new oil pastels, but then got inpatient, so I took the car & went to our local art store & stocked up on new sennelier ones again… I couldn’t wait for the others to arrive. I know I know, I might have an issue around accumulating art supplies :D, but here is the beautiful outcome with the right colors:
Can you see how it doesnt matter that nothing is clear and sharp? That tehre are no outlines and edges? I also did not pre-sketch that before, just went for it directly with the oil pastels and I really love the outcome a lot!
Next up, some more landscapes, on the left you see how I tape off the edge to get a clean border and the right one is based on a photo my friend Dan took:
And last but not least, I started to experiment with smaller pieces of paper, a bit of crazy architecture and painted backgrounds and tricky white flowers to get some nice color variations & learn how to handle white objects in oil pastel:
Each one of them had its own challenges: the house was tricky to get the dimensions and the depth & the foreground bushes & few leaves. The caterpilalr was tricky cos the format was half A5, so very tiny & details are difficult to paint in oil pastel on such a small surface. The poppy flowers were tough because they were white, I am still not 100% happy with the outcome, but I learned to have a colored background is great!
Sooo… this was an insight into my artsy explorations these days and weeks. I love the whoel process of it.
And if I am honest, which I usually am, I really find a lot of joy in doing that, much more than in illustrating digitally, any science related stuffs…
I have no idea where and how this is going in any direction, but I know that I want to continue doing it and I would love to share and sell my art as well. There are sooo many ways to do it these days, I will have to figure out a way I like that makes sense, so I do not loose myself and stil lcan create value and make people happy with beautiful creations.
I can of course sell my originals, I can make prints, I can make stickers (oh, I also tried that one this week, it worked ;), at least the digital preparation), I could start a mail club, I could open a Shopify (again) or an Etsy store… or put everything on my website… there are tons of options.
Maybe I just need to start and try it out. Either way, I feel like I am slowly but surely forging a new path for myself and I cant wait to see how it will evolve!
If you have any valuable tips or tricks to share, feel free to let me know! Or if you want to get any original artwork from me, or prints, let me know as well!
For this week, thats it! See you next week & enjoy all days until then!
Love,
Daria