Thursday 22 January 2009

Third attempt


Here is another attempt. It's 6x8 and took me two and a half hours.I thought I'd choose a simpler subject and I was more methodical with this one, following instructions from my favourite book, Kevin Macpherson's 'Fill your oil paintings with light and colour'. I worked quite slowly, making sure I had the colours and values as correct as I could.
I've found a great website called 120 paintings (http://jmahorney.blogspot.com) by Jeff Mahorney. He heard someone say that you have to paint 120 bad paintings before you can say you know anything about painting. He did paint 120 paintings and learnt a lot! The transformation from when he started is amazing. I'm going to try and follow this path and hopefully I will make progress like he did. I've worked out that altogether I've done about 15 oil paintings up till now, so I'll be continuing to count them!

8 comments:

Anita said...

I think its a mistake to think that things like oranges are an easier subject - they are just different, Not that you seem to be having any trouble with them. Lemons - I thought they would be easy and they were hell!

E-J said...

This is a really nice painting. That foreground orange in particular has such life to it!

rob ijbema said...

i'm sorry but that is 1500 paintings lazy!

rob ijbema said...

kidding you ofcourse
100 is about right
can't go wrong with
kevin mcpearson
i learned a lot from his book
your oranges look juicy
love the little high lights

Sandy said...

Glorious shine!

Kathleen said...

I started blogging because of seeing the huge improvement over the course of a year in the work of Michael Naples, a daily painter, who by the way did some oranges recently - I can't wait to see what you do --your sketches are so wonderful I think you will be up to speed way before you get to 120-

Angie said...

Anita, I think you're right - it's just that I was trying to paint too many different things at once! Thanks E-J. Ha ha, Rob I think you are right there. After 120 I expect I will only just have scratched the surface, there is so much to learn! Thanks Sandy and Kathleen for your encouragement - I will have a look at Michael Naple's blog.

Michelle said...

Lovely oranges, I think you've captured them nicely!

Thanks for the info on the 120 paintings. It's funny that you mention it because my goal this year is to paint 120 paintings...good, bad, ugly...just to be able to learn and get that "brush mileage".