Hi friends, my throwback Thursday posts have continued on my Facebook and Instagram pages so I thought I would share some of the recent ones! These posts have been a great opportunity to reflect back on old work and so how my theme, techniques and concepts have changed and developed over the years. Enjoy!
Painting for my girlfriend vs Painting for my wife! Haha I thought this weeks TBT would be a fun opportunity to look way back at a painting I made for my girlfriend of just 3months who would eventually become my wife. In the summer after my freshman year of college I was extremely motivated to impress the new girl in my life with a personalized original oil painting! I was clearly still learning but was determined to make her something special. I decided to paint a view of Pikes Peak (a defining feature of her hometown, Colorado Springs) with some colorful and fluffy clouds which we both love.
Flash forward a few years to 2016 when I spent several months painting this enormous 4'x6' landscape painting of Crested Butte in my basement bedroom/studio so that she could hang it in her new home as her very own painting.
Now in 2020 I'm incredibly fortunate to be married to that girl and have this piece hanging in our home as a symbol of our dedication to one another. Just like art, our relationships take patience, dedication and a little bit of luck.
Here is a great Throwback Thursday comparing the initial sketch to the final product of "As One"!
It's no secret that this piece is one of my best paintings to date and I owe its success as well as many others to proper planning. This comparison of the sketch to the final product makes me think of how much I've come to rely on proper planning and prep for a piece so that I can fully create the image that captures the proper concept and mood.
I never used to plan out paintings very much and while this works great for other artists, I started to find that the more accuracy I could capture in my image, the more it would blend reality with a dream. So as the years have progressed I've done a lot more sketching, photoshop rendering and gridding of my paintings so that I can capture the image properly and then choose to deviate from it if I want. •
Overall the most beneficial preparation tool for me has been doing small painting studies before a final piece. If you follow my process you will see that before each Terra Human piece I will typically do a painting study of the landscape as well as the figure before attempting the final piece. This planning process helps me work out colors, shapes and proportions so that the final product can be beautiful and thought provoking.
I hope you enjoyed my reflections on this sketch to final product comparison!
When I posted this hand and tree sketch in 2018, it had gotten the MOST social media engagement that I had ever had at the time. And this shocked me because it wasn't even a painting! But I think it shows the strength in simplicity and the significance of a strong concept coming to life.
The hand and tree oil painting was a great achievement for me in understanding lights and shadows influence colors. I'm really proud of the realism I was able to obtain in this painting and I think it really helps the concept shine through.