Still-life oil painting (needs an advice)
2yr
Rayan Khlaif
I did this quick oil painting alla-prima from life today and I'm not sure what to improve. It's just a sketch/practice.. but I really like some areas of this painting and some not. I see that I have to improve on painting the drapery. I want to start painting daily but I don't know what to paint to improve my skills faster. Any advice??
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Christopher Beaven
Hey Rayan! Great painting! Still life is one of the best subjects for improving oil painting. If you look at most traditional schools you will see that they start students out with still life. But, it's not what you paint that will help you improve faster it's how you analyze what you have painted that is the key. In your post you've already pointed out exactly what needs the most work, drapery. The key to super fast improvement is identifying what your most weak at and practicing that specifically until you've improved to the level you want. Then go on to the next thing you see needs the most work. If you consistently find your weaknesses and systematically eliminate them your improvement will be exponential. Iteration is extremely good at helping you to improve faster. If you find something you need to work on, like drapery, don't work on a huge painting of draper. Instead do a bunch of smaller paintings and iterate on each. For each painting identify what you did well, what you can improve and define how you can improve it on the next painting, then do it. Couple other improvements you can make right away. First, when you're painting that small you want to keep the texture of the canvas smooth so that it doesn't interrupt the painting so much. You can gesso any canvas and sand in between layers to keep it smooth. Or painting on some gessoed boards. Second, your able to see the form of hard edge objects well. That cube is well done! But it's the organic/rounded objects that are challenging you. Look at the manechinization exercises from Proko's figure drawing course as an example of how you can simplify complex organic forms into boxes. This will help you get a better undertanding of all forms not just ones that are already geometric. I hope that helps! Keep posting your paintings I would like to see how you improve.
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Rayan Khlaif
Thank you so much!! In September I will be studying in art school and we will paint lots of draperies, still-lifes, portraits etc. Anyways I did some more paintings in oil.. I'm really passionate in painting/drawing portraits and figures.
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