Creating an oil painting can be a long and tormenting experience, especially when you are desperate for it to turn out perfect. I will never have a time limit on my painting, though it would be great to get them out as soon as possible. Therefore, I will probably spend at least 2 weeks on each painting, depending on its size.
When I have my board, the first thing I do is I prime it. Usually if I was using a canvas, I would use a more special rabbit skin primer before painting. However, considering this painting will be on a wooden board I have used an acrylic primer instead. I will apply a few layers to make sure my surface is smooth. I prefer to use grey primer opposed to white as I can see the values of the colors clearer.
While the primer is drying, I will set up my oil paints and mix the colors I want to use. I much prefer sticking to the three primary colors (red, blue and yellow) and making other from them. I find that this creates such a smoother painting so that nothing looks out of place. I will usually mix with a palette knife and use a paintbrush to apply.
The first thing I try to paint on my piece is the background, if I don’t get distracted by another area. In many paintings, including this one, this happens to be the sky. It is always good for me to start painting the things furthest away from my eyesight. So that I won’t go other anything important in the foreground of the painting. For my painting ‘anyone up for pizza? 2’ I will use at least three different shades of the color for the sky, so that I can a nice fade to show the passage of time. I tend to use a bigger brush to cover these large areas and to make it smooth while using tiny brushes for more important details.
My next step is to paint the more detailed areas of the image, this includes the city as well as the mass of water. It was important for me to make sure I made the lights from the cities really shine so that they look as realistic as possible. This also applies when painting the water, I was desperate for realism. As a result, I spend many hours angry at how I couldn’t paint water for the life of me. Though, eventually I was happy with the motion of the water as well as the light reflections shining off the top.
Next was the meteors, I wanted them to be so much more elegant and colorful then my first attempt. So, after doing a few practice paintings of what I wanted I decided how I wanted them to look. I’d have three that all had different colors, as well they’d be pulling over a beautiful nebula as a result of their journey to earth. I was extremely happy with how these turned out, they look both delicate but still deadly.
The final steps where the starts and the person watching in awe. I planned to have more people watching, but as the painting went on, I decided to stop after one person. I may go back to this painting and add more people if I ever find the right figures that would go well with the image. The stars where the easy bit, though I wished I had taken my time to make sure they were all perfect dots. Instead of seeing random sludges if you got too close.
Now that I’ve written it all out it doesn’t really seem like a lot of work, But I promise you, this took forever!
Overall, I am extremely pleased with the effect of this piece and the way it towers over the audience. The size of this piece resembles a doorway which creates a nice metaphor of looking into someone else’s world. I believe my execution of this painting could have been better especially with the figures, as I would have liked to have more of them. In the future I will make sure not to get burnt out by a painting, but to finish it properly.
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