September, 2016 - Daniel Kenneth

September 30, 2016December 1, 2020

Paint your soul

So I set up a canvas and painted my soul. But then I realized they don’t make black dark enough for this project. So I picked something else.

I found a beautiful series of photos on Pinterest of ballet dancers. I’m into ballet, but the photos were so stunning that I wanted to paint one of them. I won’t post them here, they aren’t mine to post, but they really were pretty inspiring.

So my friend, Mark, who knew I was nervous to do skin tones and paint any type of realism, told me to start drawing it out. He likes to draw in oil pastels, so he also suggested working through the colors that way. Oil pastels were never really an interest of mine but I thought I’d give it a shot. After all, he takes a lot of my suggestions, I should take his too when he offers some.

Did you know oil pastels are nothing like painting? Yeah, I didn’t think that one through as far as I should have. I got through a sketch and then ruined it with pastels.

I think the last time I used them was almost 20 years ago in art classes. I kind of forgot you could really layer colors like other mediums. So my whites were nowhere near white enough and I just kept smearing colors around but not getting what I wanted out of it. As you can see it’s nowhere near done and I threw down the pastels in disgust.

I’m discouraged and I’m opting to let this project sit a bit longer. I’m just not ready for skin tones and realism. I know I won’t do it justice and I’ll be disappointed.

So it’s time to plan out something else out for this canvas that will fit in around my cartoon house.

September 30, 2016

Finished Foxy

I was just going to let the finished foxy quietly drift off to its new owner. I figured everyone was sick of seeing my posts about it on various social media. After several weeks, I sure was sick of looking at it. However, I had several friends demanding to see the final product. So I nabbed it back and took a few photos.

So here it is, teeth and all. No more gumming the city to death.

Now that this is out of the way, it’s time to start something new. YAY!

September 19, 2016December 13, 2020

A fox gums the city

My painting has come a long way since the last post. The purpose of this painting was to make something for a friend but, for me, it was to play with mediums and do something different. I fully expected it not to turn out, but right now I’m pretty happy with it. It’s hard to take a photo because the mediums I used were so glossy and everything is shiny but I think you’ll see enough of it even with the light from the window.

The only part left untouched at this point is the mouth. It’s funny, I actually forgot about it until my last photo. Then, I realized there was still a big pink blob in the middle where a mouth was blocked out. Next time I’ll have to remember to take some steps back and take it all in for a bit and not leave out an important part. Right now he’s just running around gumming the city to death like a geriatric monster. Hopefully tonight I’ll throw in some fangs and he’ll be complete.

I ended up trying 3 mediums in this painting. Texture paste, which pretty much covers the entire painting. Airbrush medium, which I pretty much used to wash over the whole thing and darken it. Last, I tried the glazing medium, which I used for highlights and coloring in the monster.

Speaking of highlights, check out how that glazing medium made the reflections of fire actually come out on the billowing smoke and on the buildings. It’s not as impressive in the photo, but in person with the gloss and texture, it’s really like the thing is glowing. I actually shut the lights off to see if it was just a reflection off of something red in the room…. but nope, it was just my amazing glazing.

Hopefully tonight I’ll finish it up and maybe show a before-and-after photo before moving onto the next project.

September 7, 2016December 1, 2020

So foxy!

After all my cleaning I finally got to sit down in my clean painting room and work on a project. Hopefully, I can keep it clean for some time if I stick to one project at a time and clean up throughout the project instead of just flinging things around while I work. Ok, I don’t do that, but I do somehow manage to destroy a room throughout a project.

A friend has requested that I paint him a nine-tailed fox from the Naruto anime. I dug up an image online and decided instead of copying it like I usually do, I’d take the opportunity to try something different… maybe push myself out of the comfort zone a bit.

So here is the fox so far. It’s far from done, but I really concentrated on texture. My sky started out more Van Gogh but ended up as just solid color swirls by the time I was done. I guess I was a little obsessive and didn’t realize I was mixing the color streaks so much…. oops. I still like it.

After filling in the rest of the painting with textures I plan to play with glazing techniques. Which I also have not ever done. Should be interesting, hopefully, I won’t ruin it all.