Paintings!

It feels like I am on a roll lately. I guess that is what happens when you have a lot of inspiration and ideas that you want to get done with paint on canvas. You can have a year of just 'being' in the studio doing a little bit of this and a little bit of that without actually finish a piece of art. And then suddenly it seems like everything fall into place and you can not get your ideas down fast enough. But that is the nature of inspiration. For me it has also had to do with that I wasn't happy with the direction my art was going, and I wanted a change. It felt like it took a long time before I was able to physically get down on paper or canvas what I saw in my head. Now it seems that it is finally going in the right direction. (In the right direction for me, that is.) 

When I first started to paint people asked what I wanted to paint, or what I aspired to. My answer was that I wanted to paint like Rembrandt. Not subject matters, but the way he painted light. I think that is what I have been missing in my own paintings lately. I like them, but I realized that I thought they were 'flat'. I missed the atmosphere and the light that I so admired ( and still do!) in for example Rembrandts paintings. My paintings now probably don't look that much different compared to before, if I am honest. I still paint a realistic subject against an abstract background. I guess it is more my way of approaching the subject that has shifted so that I am more aware of the lights and the darks in a painting. I guess that what I am trying to say is that the atmosphere in my paintings now relates more closely to my vision of them than what they did before. Sometimes it is the small things that matter.

This avocet painting has gone through quite a lot of changes. That is what I love about acrylics. You can repaint as many times as you want until it is what you want it to be. First I thought that I wanted to introduce some blue colours to it, but it didn't turn out well. So I painted over the whole background and decided that I wanted to paint this warm atmosphere for it. There will still be some blue shadows in the birds when they are done. Because I also wanted to paint this with blue colours, I decided to start painting another avocet painting: 

This was the first layer of colour. I only used acrylic Paynes grey. I love the background just as it is here, but because it was done on canvas it looked unfinished. So I added more paint. But I think I will paint this again with watercolours because then I can leave it as it is like this.

Here it is with a few more layers of acrylic colours. I also added a little bit of quinacridone nickel azo gold, just to try and get that blue colours to pop more. I painted the avocet in oil colours, and it will need at least one more layer. I also need to remember to add some warm yellow tones to the white feathers so that it corresponds with the background.

This is a watercolour I did almost a year ago, and I always meant to turn it into a painting on canvas. Now I decided that it was time.

The background is done in acrylic paint. Maybe not as interesting as the watercolour background, but  I struggled with painting the Eagleowl in watercolours.

Here is the first blocking in with oil colours for the Eagleowl. This is one of the birds that are on my bucket list to see in real life. The reference photo for this is from Pixabay.

That was it for this week. I wish you all a great weekend!