a couple of studies from life

[Ramesh Vyaghrapuri]

Thank you, Richard & Claudemir, for your comments.

I will look out for modeling the forms a little better (the arms on that second painting are definitely sloppy -- I tend to lose concentration around the 2 hour mark though it is slowly getting better with practice).

[Claudemir Bonfim]

Originally Posted by Ramesh Vyaghrapuri

I will look out for modeling the forms a little better (the arms on that second painting are definitely sloppy -- I tend to lose concentration around the 2 hour mark though it is slowly getting better with practice).

Try using a mirror every 30 minutes to check for accuracy. Da Vinci was the one who first wrote about this technique.

Originally Posted by Richard

Consider painting across forms (the arms) to develop a better feeling of solidity.

You're right again!

[Ramesh Vyaghrapuri]

Here are a couple more, the incomplete one is after 3 hours into a two session open studio. The other one is 2.5 hours. Both were painted directly without an underdrawing or painting. I was having too much trouble with layering of brushstrokes where they blend and muddy up unexpectedly, so decided to try to paint cleanly and directly. It was a bit tiring to evaluate each brush stroke (ended up sacrificing edge quality and variety)..

I might have to try to use some kind of a wax medium to help with the layering a bit (or maybe use egg on the top layer). This might allow me more control.. or maybe it is just that I need to get more experience to figure out how to load brushes so that wet layering is more well behaved.

[Chris Saper]

Oh, my! Thank you so much for sharing!

These are all just gorgeous, just as they are. Lovely work.

[Ramesh Vyaghrapuri]

Originally Posted by Chris Saper

These are all just gorgeous, just as they are.

Thanks, Chris!

The compressed blurry photos (am too lazy to spend time on photographing studies) nicely hide away the lack of variety in brush strokes and edges which makes the surface somewhat boring and too much like an illustration.

Here is an earlier oil study where I find my brushwork more interesting (but it was mostly a study in edge/color/value contrasts) which had some wet-in-wet layering that sometimes worked...

I will post newer work in separate threads as seems the convention here.