Crimson Daggers — Art forum

Will try! ;)

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I'm totally jealous of how fresh and vibrant, yet natural your environments look

Fantastic sketchbook

Thanks clayton!

Here's a portrait I did (partially) from life. A couple of tips for (digital) portraits from life:

- Since friends and family may be reluctant to sit for you for prolonged periods of time, do a colour sketch from life. Try to get as much of the colour, proportion etc. without finalizing anything, then snap a photo and finish the portrait with the help of the photo.
- Have your sitter watch a movie so they don't get bored as quickly.
-Tell your sitter that they might not get to see a result since portrais are hard. They'll understand- after all they're helping you to get better, not to get a painting of themselves (just an added bonus if everything goes well). Takes lots of pressure away.
- Use large brushes. No small brushes. If the statement is too small to be made with a large-ish brush, it's non-essential. Leave it out.
- Squint. Squint. Suqint. Summarize. Simplify.
- Make sure there's good and constant light on your sitter.
- If your colour sketch clashes with the photo in some way regarding light & colour, believe your colour sketch. Cameras suck at colour and values.

Great tips on the digital portrait painting from life. It can indeed be quite daunting… thanks for always sharing steps, insights & helpful advice along with your art :)

No update in a long time! Have been swamped with work and I'm also in the process of finishing up my degree thesis for uni, so free time has been sparse. I needed to get away from the computer during breaks, so personal paintings in digital were off the table... That's when I discovered watermixable oil colours. Been painting at night when work/uni is done. It's been fun and painting purely for myself in a medium I have no knowledge of is quite refreshing. Hadn't painted with oils ever before and the last time I painted traditionally on a regular basis (in watercolours... the horror) was in school, about 7 years ago. Anyways, here are my very first 3 attempts at oil painting. Just painting in monochrome for now, I have enough on my hands with mixing and generally just handling brushes. I use Winsor&Newton Artisan WMOs, and I've got a shipment of cobra WMO's incoming (Zorn palette when I feel safe enough to try my hand at colour). Cheers & sorry for the lack of updates.

Great job. I love the brush work.

i have always admired your hard work. the results shows it very much.
the notes you leave are also very helpful. got nothing to crit because in my nooby eyes your works are flawless.

Thanks cricketts!
Thank you fuxfire!

My first foray into colour, using the zorn palette:


7x9"

Will move to a bigger canvas size now (8x10" fot the time being).

Thats last one is fantastic! Makin me want to bust out my paintbox and go to the woods to paint...but its still too cold in scotland...

Thanks Kimonas!

one last paintign on a small canvas, next one is going to be a bit bigger:

27x22cm, oil on canvas.

Man, i know you for longer time and i will never forget you, you'r an inspiration becaue of all the dedication, passion, hardwork you've put into it to get where you are right now. I love the vibe, energy that's going out from your creations when i'm looking at them. Huge respect, Sir Rene! :)

Thanks nympho, you're way too kind!

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painted from life:

ref from http://photos4artists.co.uk/

Really sick stuff, Rene!!

Just looking at the stuff you posted on this page and some of your pieces in your portfolio, I think the next step for you to bring it up is to add some crisp lines in your work. You have cool lighting and nice form rendering, but your lights seems to bleed over a lot in odd areas and you could define forms and your focal points more by cutting hard edges instead for transitioning every edge.



Ignore the total lack of the texture brushes you like to use, but because you have good soft lighting, really controlling how you use it and cutting areas to define them will step your work up by a lot. You could really crisp up your cast shadows, especially near the source and there forms butt up against each other to give your images a lot of definition.
Another thing I noticed in your work is almost an excessive amount of detail. A lot of this is because you use texture brushes, but because you can add good detail the next thing is to really control where you put it to draw focus. If you simplify some of your value structures where it isn't super important, it will help bring focus wherever you want it. On some forms, like the concrete pillars in your last piece the detail is almost too contrasty, because it is a blocky form the "faces" of the column should hover around one single tone to feel like a flat surface, but you go from a good mid-dark to almost black in a lot of the diffuse lit areas.

Keep up the hard work!

Thanks for the feedback Vic!

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Found some extra time to finish another of my oil paintings. This is the first time I haven't finished a painting alla prima but worked in layers (no glazing though). These are water-mixable oils on canvas. The frame is photoshopped ;)