One of the things I have been spending more time on is painting. I have been wanting to further develop my skills as a painter and the best way to do that is to paint more. I have found landscapes to be a good source with which to work and have found some really good ideas on Pinterest. I am not concerned with capturing realism with these paintings. I am using them more as exercises to get my creative brain flowing much the same way you would use journal prompts as a starting point for writing.
These are the ones I have done so far. I will post sources under each image. I didnt want to include a side-by-side of the originals as I am not looking to compare but I did want to site proper credit so that it doesnt appear like I am stealing someone elses work. Disclaimer: These are not my original ideas, just my version of someone elses idea, used for practice purposes.
Scarlet Skies from Pinots Palette on pinterest
Crescent Boise from Yaymaker on pinterest
Untitled from Pinots Palette on pinterest
Squishys Embrace from Painting with Jane on pinterest
Just as a point of interest, I use acrylic paints; not a big fan of oils. I chose these specific images for a couple of reasons. One, they seemed easy enough to recreate that I didnt feel overwhelmed at the thought of painting them, but they also provided enough of a challenge so that I didnt feel like I was wasting my time. Second, they contained subject matter that interested me, cause if youre going to spend potentially hours staring at one image you might as well enjoy what youre looking at.
It was really fun playing with some of the textures, like getting the trees to look leafy, which I called upon my days of watching the Joy of Painting with Bob Ross for. One of the tricky aspects of painting with acrylic is that it dries fast, which is both a good and bad thing. Its good in that it allows you to move through a painting quickly but on the other hand it makes blending a hurried affair. I know there is medium you can mix into the paint so that it doesnt dry as fast and I do use that. However, it still provides a bit of a challenge.
One way I have found to work around this is to pre-mix a lot of the shades I will need to use. This means I spend a lot of time prepping my palette but its worth it to get the effects I want to achieve. All in all, I am pretty happy with the way these turned out. If there is one thing I could work on its slowing down, taking more time with each section of the painting. I like that I can complete one of these in an afternoon but it doesnt mean that I have to.
Here is a link to my instagram if you want to see these and other artwork by me, as well as other random stuff I post there. https://www.instagram.com/nerwin_willowcrow/
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