I just finished another exercise for Block 2 of Evolve Artist. This is number 17, so only three more to go and I’ll be on to using colour!
I enjoyed this one, as I like drawing and painting animals, whether they’re realistic or cartoonish. Like all of these paintings, I’m happy with some parts, and know at the same time that there’s plenty of room for improvement. I did forget to add a small shadow underneath the half sphere on the left, and only realised when I took the photo. That kind of oversight is annoying because at this stage there’s no way to fix a painting after it’s dry. Hopefully that’ll be covered later in the course! I probably shouldn’t have softened the back mushroom as it was only set a little bit behind the other things, but I wanted to practice my blurred edges.
Evolve Artist Block 2, #17 – Mushrooms and Horse. Oil on canvas.
At this point I can see which skills are consistently okay, and where I need to improve. I always get good feedback on my sharp edges and paint coverage. I usually get the values correct, although I’ve made a few mistakes here and there. My proportions are sometimes a bit off, but most objects are within the 10% margin of error they allow (I still find putting numbers to my measurements a bit unnatural, as I’ve discussed before, but I’m okay with doing it now). Gradients are more hit and miss; sometimes they’re smooth enough, sometimes not, and I always feel like my gradients could be smoother. But being able to see how they could be better doesn’t help when trying to smooth them out more just makes things worse, so I can only do my best and keep practising!
See all my Evolve Artist paintings here.
