08-06-2014, 07:07 AM
Wow, sounds like you are even further out of the way than I am. I feel your pain with the powercuts, until they re-did a load of lines around here I had them a lot until about a year or so ago. Also rural buses are just ugh.
Still lifes and imaginative work, excellent to see you pushing yourself with this stuff!
The still life seems to read well in form even though there isn't much contrast to the shadows, so I'm guessing you are doing them in a bright room. The forms and colours are a definite improvement on the first one and it is really nice to see the bounce light colours on the surface too, good attention to detail there.
It might help to, if you have one around, set up a lamp and light them with it in a darkened room. It is easier to understand how the light effects things when there is only one major source to deal with, and you get a really nice range of shadows to deal with too. Also, if you are doing multiple objects, don't be afraid to use the still life as a bit of a composition exercise - before you start painting, look at your set up and think of how you can make some interesting shadow shapes, get the objects overlapping and casting shadows on each other, etc.
I like rafa's suggestion of reducing paintings to thumbs - it is a good way to study composition (and colour for that matter!). I've looked a a lot of old masters for it, but it worth being diverse. (For example, I learnt good few tricks about composition from book and CD covers I never previously noticed, because they are so simple and obvious.) It try to keep thinking of major shapes, and designing the picture around them. Which sounds simple and totally is not. It might help work in maybe 3-5 solid values to help simplify thumbs and get into the habit of thinking about their design (and don't be afraid to work smaller if you are finding them slow, or if the detail is taking up time - sometimes I see thumbs that are tiny, with just a few major shapes and directional lines in them).
Great poses on the last page too, they're looking much more dynamic, and you can foreshorten them really well.
Still lifes and imaginative work, excellent to see you pushing yourself with this stuff!
The still life seems to read well in form even though there isn't much contrast to the shadows, so I'm guessing you are doing them in a bright room. The forms and colours are a definite improvement on the first one and it is really nice to see the bounce light colours on the surface too, good attention to detail there.
It might help to, if you have one around, set up a lamp and light them with it in a darkened room. It is easier to understand how the light effects things when there is only one major source to deal with, and you get a really nice range of shadows to deal with too. Also, if you are doing multiple objects, don't be afraid to use the still life as a bit of a composition exercise - before you start painting, look at your set up and think of how you can make some interesting shadow shapes, get the objects overlapping and casting shadows on each other, etc.
I like rafa's suggestion of reducing paintings to thumbs - it is a good way to study composition (and colour for that matter!). I've looked a a lot of old masters for it, but it worth being diverse. (For example, I learnt good few tricks about composition from book and CD covers I never previously noticed, because they are so simple and obvious.) It try to keep thinking of major shapes, and designing the picture around them. Which sounds simple and totally is not. It might help work in maybe 3-5 solid values to help simplify thumbs and get into the habit of thinking about their design (and don't be afraid to work smaller if you are finding them slow, or if the detail is taking up time - sometimes I see thumbs that are tiny, with just a few major shapes and directional lines in them).
Great poses on the last page too, they're looking much more dynamic, and you can foreshorten them really well.