oil study (Patreon)

hello all. i spent yesterday doing a bunch of studies from life, including this little painting. i'll have more studies to post soon because i'm going to a new life drawing class on sunday for the first time!

the painting is in oil, and the only medium i used to thin paint was white spirit. the lighting sucked, but oh well. he was playing BG3 on my PC so at least he wasn't bored! mostly i just wanted to try using spirit as a medium now that i have a house where my windows can open.

here's a progress gif of my study. i'll sum up the process; i started with a wash of diluted orange/yellow paint, and let that dry. (and drip everywhere, apparently.) it was just a piece of A4 bristol board that i gesso'd. then i did a really thinned out block-in of the shadows/darks with gold-green. i refined that, and refined the silhouette as i painted in the background. then, i finished the rest of the owl. kidding. after that, i started by painting in the lights with thicker paint, then painted in the darks, finding the details as i went.

afterwards i put it in photoshop, digitally painted over a few things, liquified it a bit, and then centered the head by extending the image. (i painted too large to begin with and i couldn't be bothered to start again.)

i really want to improve my process, being able to plan more carefully and mix skin tones better. this painting took about 2-3 hours in total.

i love taking pictures of palettes.