I had a breakthrough!
I purchased an oil painting tutorial by one of my favorite painters, David Cheifetz. He has a couple of tutorials available on gumroad, here’s a link:
https://gumroad.com/davidcheifetz
Watching his demo’s, I was able to see how exactly this guy paints so darn thick without everything getting all mixed up. It turns out, I was putting way too many strokes on the canvas, and trying to be too blendy-blendy with dry brushes, etc.
Here’s some pro tips I picked up:
- Use a medium (duh I knew this but I think I was mixing it wrong on the pallete, you’ve really got to mix it and get the consistency right. I’ve got water soluble oil paints so I just used water, but I think a gel like medium like David uses would be perfect)
- Use the tip of the paintbrush!
- After 2/3 strokes, get more paint on the brush! DON’T KEEP STROKING THE CANVAS. NO!
- Start with the focus of the painting, so that when you paint everywhere else, you can tone it down and keep the focus standing out.
- Edit your photo reference more!
Okay, great pro tips David, thank you. With these in mind, I decided to try a slightly different reference photo, tired of landscapes with difficult trees and water!
I am really happy that I managed to really try the actual method of painting that I’ve wanted to (thick, alla prima, impasto stuff). It’s obviously not perfect, you can really see some of the big mistakes when it comes to the proportions when comparing it directly to the reference.
But, I am pretty impressed that the car doesn’t look like a total wonky blob! For me, that’s a true result. I am not even sure I can draw a car and when I started this painting I was thinking to myself, “are you sure, Katey, that you can paint a damn car?!”. Okay, so I didn’t 100% get the car right, but it could definitely be a lot worse.
All in all, this is a milestone and I am excited to try again with this exact method. With more patience I think I can get even better results.
