Oils painting

Before I start, a little self promotion, I have some spare moleskine pages on sale at the spoke art website, some are as low as $50 and go up to $150 I think.

 Only the ones with a number and not a name are for sale and they are unframed.


http://store.spoke-art.com/category/rod-luff

Please keep in mind that some of those are sold already. If you are interested you should email Ken and quote the number. I'm not getting rich off these, all proceeds go into framing and shipping costs I pay to have shows. :-)

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So I'm just gonna talk a bit about this process, it's not a tutorial so please don't expect to learn anything:P

 I drew up the figure to get the proportions and then sized it with GAC 100 by Golden. it is an artificial replacement for rabbit skin glue. You need to use a size because it stops the oil from penetrating the surface, which would eventually lead to rotting. Microbes can eat your paints, I guess that is pretty cool, but ultimately we want to delay entropy. I usually use about 3-4 layers.

more info:

"preparing a paint support" brought to you by golden.

I cut the double page out of the book because it was annoying to paint the figure with it cutting through the middle.

Then i blocked in a rough skin tone and some shadows.

As you can see it looks pretty crap at this point.

phase 2 I added some opaque colours and yes she gained a few kilos. I don't know why i scraped off parts of the block in and I guess i wanted to repaint the face ( a common theme in this work).

I cut back into the figure to fix it up and added some oil pastels in there for fun, but it still looks crap because I need to do the face and hands. More opaque on the sternum and boobs because the light is hitting it hard. 

Done the hands and arm here, adding the warms of the knees and some fancy little squiggle things to entertain myself it is pretty fun at this point.

Adding some random colours and seeing what happens, I don't know why. Trying to tighten it up and finish because I could paint and repaint things forever. It's fun to see how much chroma you can get away with (or not).

The sun crept up on me and that was a probably a good sign I should go to bed. 

And here is the final. 

later that day, I scraped off the head, cut the GAC and paper so I had to reprime it with GAC and then repaint the head, so that's why there's weird texture on it.  It looks a lot better in person or try the hi res by clicking the image.

Please excuse my self indulgent detail shot, keep in mind its bigger than the actual painting. 

You can see the shadows where I cut the paper by accident when I was scraping off the dry paint to repaint it.

Thanks for looking!

A drawing

here's a sketch on bristol, 8 x 10, used a colour pencil and a tiny bit of pastel.

It was difficult to get this one right, I had to fail a few hard worked drawings (all of which were about a third the size.). I'll be doing some more head studies to try and get better.

Here's one of the disasters:

prep

these are just some sketch studies in pencil/pastel to work things out. I still need to do separate studies to work out the composition, colour and tone.

Thanks to everyone who has subscribed to the blog, if I reach 500 I may do a little sketch giveaway to celebrate.

 more updates coming in the next few days

Violin II

This was a really oil fun painting to do. The block in was for trying to get everything simplified and clear, and then the last stage was the more enjoyable part, experimenting with some pastels, texture and opaque/transparent effects.

Things that came and are ready for tasting.

Here are the full versions of the works I had showing at the Spoke Art group show last night, "A taste of things to come." I might post up some photos from the opening night later on.

I've got a few more moleskine paintings to post up soon, so stay tuned!

If you'd like price info then please email me at rod@rodluff.com as the prices are very affordable.

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Cheers

Wind Study

Pencil, acrylic, pastel

8" by 10"

Wind

pencil pastel

15" by 20"

Violin

8" by 10"

Oil/pastel

A taste of things to come

Hey guys, 

I'll have three works available at the new Spoke Art group show "A taste of things to come" in San Francisco, CA. The show opens Thursday the 4th of August from 6- 10 pm and runs through until the 25th. The only images here that aren't in the show are the hand studies.

I hope if you are in town and are free that you go, because the other artists are really awesome, so you are bound to be inspired!

There should be more coming this week, and I'll post the full size images once the show opens.

To see the larger image, just right click and open in new window.

Cheers!