Marcus Bäckström
Marcus Bäckström
Sweden
Activity Feed
Marcus Bäckström
Painted this portrait the other day. Any advice on how I could have dealt with the hair better?
Jo Sheridan
So... I had another go... and I think this is going in the right direction - thanks so much to you all for your great advice and help here - I tried not to overwork this, and have now I think got a better range of colours - as to whether they are actually in the right places or not on my figure is another question entirely :) I have included my pallet so you can see how this ended up - so much better than my original muddy mess - although I think I have a lot to learn about keeping it tidy and trying to group my warms/cools/lights/darks... The other learning point I have uncovered as well is the skill of taking a photograph of an Oil Painting - seeing as I paint in my shed where I have lots of big windows this is a nightmare for taking a photograph without reflections and shine on the surface - I do have a DSLR camera, but its so long since I have used the manual exposure settings that there was a lot of guess work going on here...
Marcus Bäckström
i would highly advice to pay just as much attention to the background as the figure. It might not seem as important but color is all about relations to each other. Changing one color (in this case the background) is gonna affect how you see all the other colours, same with value. In the reference the background is clearly light blue but you painted if dark red, the complete opposite. Look how much lighter the background in the ref is compared to the cast shadow btw. Value over color every time.
Marcus Bäckström
Looks like you're still painting in grayscale, don't be afraid use more of the yellow and red when mixing. Something that might help you get more comfortable with the colors is to do a colorwheel using the palette, sure helped me when i first started painting with color
Jo Sheridan
That is such a good idea!! - Thanks Marcus
Marcus Bäckström
Going back to the basics and painting fruit to try and learn more about how color works. I feel like i have a basic understanding of color theory but there's still so much more to learn. I realise a lot of colors gets lost in photos so it's not gonna be 100% accurate to the irl painting but any thoughts on the pear are welcomed
Izak van Langevelde
Looks great! It looks a little dark, is this the photo? What medium is this? Okay, you didn't ask for critique, but the only thing that bugs me is that the trapezius muscle is a little prominent...
Marcus Bäckström
Thank you, It is a bit brighter in real life yeah, it's really hard to take good photos of oil paintings due to the glare. I'm guessing you're talking about the upper part of the trapezius at the neck, i might have exaggerated the contrast of the shadow on the back of the neck. Maybe softening that up slightly would help?
Jo Sheridan
Really special - its awesome - how many hours approx??
Marcus Bäckström
around 35 hours or so
Dan B
Awesome work Marcus. How big is this piece?
Marcus Bäckström
Roughly 60cm x 40cm
@tes_k_a
Wow...is this is oil painting? Anyways it looks great.
Marcus Bäckström
Thanks, yeah oil on linen
Marcus Bäckström
Well there is it, it's finished and i couldn't be more happy with the result!
Marcus Bäckström
Could you talk a bit about the materials you'll be using?
Marcus Bäckström
Brushes, medium, board, etc...
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