Learning more by copying

This time I have been copying a painting by the daily painter Carol Marine. It is small, 15 x 21 cm. I have painted it in oil, like the original version. It was very interesting to do this excercise as it is another way of painting than I am used to. It is alla prima, painted in one go.

What I realize I really need to learn more about, is use of colours. And I think copying other artists as I am doing these days is really valuable to me,

Learning by copying

I have been working on another of my house paintings the last days, but it will not reveal itself no matter how much I try. So, at the end of the day yesterday, I decided to leave it for a while and instead practice painting tecniques by copying an other artist. So I made this painting, which is highly inspired by a painting by the artist Melinda Matayas. My painting turned out quite a bit darker than Mataya´s painting, but I decided to leave it like this as it kind of works.

I like Mataya´s way of using colours and how she decomposes the objects. So I will make yet another copy today.

Cottage in the wood - monoprint

Here is the finished result of the monoprint after I have added some dark areas in the middle ground in order to lead the eye better.

Monoprint - Cottage in the woods

Can you see the tree branches in the foreground and the white roof of a small cottage in the background?

I have been working on monoprints today. I do not have proper paper for printmaking, I have just used a poor quality sketching paper. But I really like this kind of work allthough I do not master it very well yet - the not knowing what the result will be is what excites me. Most of the attempts fails, but now and then something interesting shows up. I am considering hand colouring this image a bit so it is easier for the viewer to see what`s there. Do you think I should? I actually think I have to, as the black area in the middle of the image dominates and leads the eye too strongly.

Drawing exercises

Drawing execises is my constantly bad conscience. I know it is important. I know I need to do it. But I am resistant to do it! I  kind of think it is a bit boring. All though when I sit down and actually draw, it feels nice. So it is a matter of just DOING it. Here I have been drawing from a newspaper photo (the first drawing) and copying drawings from some nordic painters, the so called Skagen painters from the 19th century. Copying other artists is a great way to learn different tecniques so I will do some more of these copy drawings.

House

Ok, so I had to go back to painting houses again.

I am not satisfied with this painting as I cannot quite get the transparent layers to behave the way I want. And I have allready ruined some nice effects that was in the painting earlier. So - I show you this painting as a kind of sketch that I want to build further on.

The last weeks I have been working on two BIG paintings  -150 x 200 cm. I find it quite difficult to work on such a format - to make the whole piece come together in terms of colour harmonies, composition and painting tecniques. They have to be finnished within a couple of weeks as they are part of a challenge we have got from the art school I am attending. So - I will come back to those paintings  - they are quite different in expression than these stringent house paintings....