Right my loves, welcome back to my channel and to this new series where we are
inventing our own commissions to build on our portfolios, to make art
more fun and exciting, give ourselves some projects to work on, explore
different subject matter, things a bit different to our usual work, and
potentially prepare ourselves for real quiet work in the future. So last time
around we worked on an album cover and I'll be sharing at the end some of the
great ones that you shared with me but for now we are working on a real project
this time around, not something that I've made up. I actually have a commission-
it's more of a gift- my auntie is having a big birthday soon and she asked if, for
her gift, I would make her a large painting of a wave. So that's the project
for me; large-scale painting- I have a very big canvas here
that I need to fill- she's just sent over one picture of the kind of thing that she
wanted so that's really all I've got to go off of and there was a deadline but
with everything that's going on- and I don't know when this video will go up- we're
actually not in full lockdown yet but I don't see myself traveling all the way
to Manchester with everything that's going on, so the deadline is a
little bit looser but I am gonna still try and stick to getting this done by
the end of this week. That's a point actually, I'm not sure if this video is
gonna go up before I get to give it to her so hopefully she's not watching-... um
well anyway. if you are going to take part this time around. you don't have to
do a wave. I'm gonna be your client for this one and I would like you to paint
a picture on a larger scale than you would normally do, this is for someone's
home, for my home, the kind of picture that could go above a
fireplace in a living room, something that's gonna be the focal point of the room and
something that's gonna fit the space well. Just keep that in mind and
obviously if you have only a smaller thing to work with that's absolutely
fine as well, just make it something that'll stand out. And it doesn't have to
be a wave but something nature-related would be nice. It could be
a landscape, could be like close-up of some leaves or some flowers or you know
the clouds, the sky... just any thing-...
something nature-related on a larger scale than you would
normally paint. And then the style is up to you because in this case because I've
been given free rein to do whatever style I want to do. So that is where
we're gonna start. I am still in a style limbo so I'm gonna have a quick look
online at some examples of wave paintings just to see if anything really
takes my eye. There are limitless different ways
to approach this but a few things that I'm seeing a lot of; there are a lot of
more detailed paintings, more realistic where you get that frothy, splashy just
really detailed look. And then on the other end of the scale, you've got more
of a close-up, more smooth looks, and they're a bit more lenient with the
colours which is quite interesting, and some of them really do push that
abstractness, a lot of bold brushstrokes. And then there are a few that fall
somewhere in between which is I think where I'm gonna end up, with a lot of
smooth lines, maybe a nice use of color but then also some really like frothy
detail in there as well. And then the only other thing that I really came
across is some of those more woodblock-looking
prints. It's almost
like the Hokusai wave- this one- and I think, if this was just for me, I might
do something more along those lines because I just love that look but I
don't know how well that would translate onto a canvas like this and you know
whether or not I'd be able to do it because I'm planning on using acrylics
and I think this would suit more either an actual ink like wood blocking
technique or watercolours. So style wise I do think I'm gonna go somewhere in
between the like smooth and a bit more texture and then also to refer back to
some waves I've painted in the past.
Nothing hugely detailed, this was a 10-minute study I think I did during my
30 landscape challenge and then I tend to do things like this just for fun. It's
really- if you haven't tried this- it's just a fun way to beat anxiety, really
just to like talk yourself in to painting, do something really low
maintenance and low effort. And then as a practice round, you may have seen this
one that I did in a video- I actually did this live on a video so if you want to
see me do the whole process, that this one. This took about an hour and I think.
It's close to what I'm going for. As I said, this only took me an hour so
there'd be a lot more detail in there. Yeah something along the lines of
this. So the next step will be looking for references. As I said, I've got this
one picture to go off and I'm not sure how much of it she's looking for, how
much how close it needs to be to that. So there are a lot of nice wave pictures on
royalty-free websites so I think we will go for something like this one and
I'll just see if I can take some creative liberties in making up a
different way for that wave to end because it is quite harsh, quite
stormy. But I do like the way it swoops up. Now then, this is where I'm a bit
stuck. I could dive right in and just get started on it I could do another
practice round-.. maybe... yeah, maybe that's what I should do; a practice round of that
reference but with less action. I'm going to take that picture into
Photoshop and edit the colours at least and then I think I'll do one
small-ish... maybe about this size, do a quick practice round and I probably will
leave it at that today because I'm too scared to actually tackle the big one.
And maybe if I have time I'll prime that canvas as well.
So I realized pretty early on that this one wasn't going to plan but that's a
good place to be in really for the first draft, it just meant that I allowed
myself to just have fun with it try different things, different techniques
that I thought might work, and just see where it took me. I felt a lot freer
to just make mistakes and make a mess and that didn't happen as much as I
thought it would. I think that wave painting must be particularly forgiving
because somehow this has turned out quite all right and I have learned a lot
about how I do want to approach the real thing now. I don't think I'm gonna do an
underpainting, just don't think that's necessary, and I
also think while I did start with these like broad strokes, I'll do something
similar but not so much. I think more like broad shapes rather than like
sweeping all the way across because there are some areas where I lost it's
kind of vibrancy or brightness, where I would like to try and maintain that as
much as possible. That's another point, the colours are a little bit off but not
too bad. I would like it to be a lot lighter I still haven't figured out how
I'm gonna do like the top of the wave but I kind of feel like I'm ready to do
the real thing, I just can't really see myself getting much more out of more
practices. I'm just not really a price this kind of person, I hate doing the
same thing over and over again. I might regret this decision because this is the
only large canvas I have and now that everything's kind of shut down, I don't
know if I'll be able to get another one in time but I think I'm ready. I'm gonna
wait till tomorrow to actually do it and in the meantime maybe I'll do
a bit more experimentation but this was a good practice round. I don't know what
I'm gonna do with this but it's pretty cool. Not bad for an hour's work.
I like the approach I took for this project, spending just enough time on the
preparations, looking at enough different references and examples of similar
paintings and different styles and deciding which bits I could take from
where and how I could make that all come together. The practice painting was
enough to confirm that the plan I had in my head of all the different elements of
style and the combination of references I was using worked, and a little painting
really came in handy for the ugly stages of the big one; being able to
refer back to my previous attempt and reassure myself that I could pull it all
together in the end. And when things started to look a bit off in the big
painting, instead of trying to work from reference pictures, I instead tried to
emulate more of that looseness from the little practice painting. I think I've
only ever painted something on a canvas this size once before and never for
someone else which is added pressure so I just tried to take a broad approach to it
all; starting with a few loose lines to map in the key areas- where the sea met
the sky, how the wave would travel across the page, and the direction of the sea in
the foreground- and then I took one section at a time just blocking in
the main colours, getting the right values in there. It was all loose and sweeping
and everything blended into everything else but I knew that the next layer
would start to introduce some detail and some differentiation. So if you're
working on something on larger scale- I mean, on any scale
really- but particularly the bigger you get, this is a really good way to do things.
You get to see from very early on if things are working as a whole rather
than focusing in on individual areas of detail at a time and then realising at
the end that they don't all come together- and it's so satisfying adding
in all the details at the end and seeing that painting come to life before your
eyes. I was scared for a bit- for a while really- at the inner bit of the wave, that
it just wasn't working, so I moved around the painting, focusing on other areas until
I could figure out if I could live with it as it was, or if I'd have to go back
over it. And in the end I did go over what I had in the middle, just a little
bit and I'm so glad I did. And I'm glad I left the area alone for a while just to
give myself a better idea of whether it was working or not without overworking
it in the moment. I wanted to share this process with you guys today just to
hopefully encourage you to try something similar and hopefully in sharing my
process you have a better idea of how you would like to approach it yourself. I
would love to see if you guys come up with something, be it a big wave or just
anything nature-related on a larger scale than you usually work. And
while we have some time, I thought I would share some of my favorite album
covers that you shared with me from last month's video. So I absolutely love this
one from ghostly_t inspired by a song called Peaches. There's just something
about this that's really striking, I just think they've done such
a good job here. In this one they said they used a slightly different approach
to what they would usually do and I think they've done it really
effectively, also loving how they've utilised the digital
element, added in that neon. Amazing. Love the colours and
texture in this one it, really catches your eye and draws you in and tells a
story. It's got a really mysterious vibe to it that I love. And finally, we'll go
for this one; there's just really calm atmosphere to this one and I'm really
intrigued by whatever song inspired it; 'Under the Water', I would love to hear it
because if it's anything like this piece of art, I'm sure it'd be a lovely, calming
escape from where we're at right now. And you can tag it your work on instagram
with the hashtag if you are inspired by this video to create some
work of your own, I would love to see it and potentially
feature it on the next video. I'll be leaving a card above, a poll of what
we're going to do for next month's video, so if there's anything in particular you
want to see, give it a vote and we'll work on it next time together.
But otherwise thank you so much for joining me for this one and I'll see you in
next video. Bye!