Hard to believe that this is one of my final posts for ECMP355 and convocation will be here in the spring.

Looking at my progress of painting from December to the first week in April.  I hope you can see an improvement because I sure can.  To bring those up to speed on my learning project.  For my ECMP355 class I was to target a skill that is complex to learn, worth learning, and of great interest, and online sources must be used to learn the skill.  At the beginning of the semester, my brother had shown me a video of Bob Ross.  His paintings were calming and relaxing to watch.  After internship I decided maybe painting would be something that is calming for me, as I don’t really have that hobby I can focus on.

Blog Posts on Painting 101 with Curtis

Exploring the Joy of Painting: 

• My first post of my learning project, discussing my inspiration, and personal background of painting.
• Key links include “Acrylic Painting for Dummies Guide”

Painting #1: Landscape Painting, The Waterfall:

• My first painting following the tutorial by Allison Prior.
• Ironically, this is one of my favourite paintings.
• I learned the techniques of painting clouds, trees, water, waterfalls, and rocks.

Painting #2: Effective Shade

• Second painting using the tutorial of Clive5Art
• Learned alternative strategies for trees and clouds, as well as stars.
• Purchased a phone tripod and wanted to practice creating a video, using the video editor app available for Samsung phones.

Painting #3: Painting 101 – Painting with Curtis 

• Another painting tutorial of Allison Prior’s 
• I wanted to try a variety of paintings, thus, I choose this country scene.
• Practiced a sunset, grass, big trees, and a cabin.

Painting #4: Life’s a Beach

• This is my least favourite painting.  I was very disappointed and frustrated with how it turned out.
• It is tropical beach scene tutorial by Allison Prior.
• Focused on a new technique of wet-on-wet, a difficult technique for acrylic paint users.
• I reached out to Allison Prior on Twitter, however never did hear back from her.

Painting #5: The Magic of Painting – With Curtis

• This painting I decided I wanted to see what I could do with limited additional help.
• I used previous techniques used in my paintings to make something my own.
• The new technique I learned in this painting is the creation of mountains.

Painting #6: Fall Woods, Easy Beginner TutorialA Clive5Art tutorial, one of the top three paintings I have done.

• Techniques include wet-on-wet, creation of shrubs, and birch trees, and using blending for the grass.
• Gained experience filming my own video using a GoPro and iMovie.

Painting #7: Golden Glow, A Bob Ross Tribute

• Bob Ross created a painting similar to mine, Clive5Art provides a tutorial using acrylic paintings instead of oil paints.
• This painting is one I am very proud of. It is easily my favourite piece.
• I was able to create my first stop motion video of me painting Golden Glow.  

For those of you who have followed along with my painting, and are thinking about learning to paint yourself, here are some excellent websites I recommend.

Will Kemp Art School – This website provides a beginner artist the basics about are (I found this halfway through my project). However, it would be an excellent resource for someone wondering where to begin.

Howcast – Provides painting tutorials, experimenting with different painting techniques.

Craftsy – A blog that goes over 13 different painting techniques.

These three websites will provide you some direction if you are looking into painting.  If you believe that you can’t paint, because you aren’t talented enough, or you think that you aren’t patient enough.  I can understand what you are feeling as I was the same way.  However, painting is not that difficult.  You paint in layers, and it requires practice.  However, anyone can do it.  Over a term of 4 months, I believe my progress has been massive.  If we compare my baseline painting compared to my last painting that makes my progress more visual, and truthfully the last painting wasn’t all that difficult.

My Golden Glow is based on Bob Ross’s painting “Golden Glow”.  If you haven’t had the opportunity to watch the grace of Bob Ross.  Check it out below.

Bob Ross uses oil paint and a wet on wet technique.  Just some background information, oil paint takes a long time to dry, up to a day.  Acrylic paint dries a lot quicker than oil paint, thus makes it more difficult to use a wet on wet technique.  Clive5Art uses acrylic paint but also has additional liquids, what he states is “liquid clear” to enable the paint to stay wet to work with it. I was unable to find liquid clear at Michael’s when I went to restock on paint.

I used Clive’s video once again to base my painting on. I enjoy his videos because it is clear, and to the point, and be provides different levels of paintings for the viewers.  As I did not have all the colours and supplies that Clive has, improvisation was needed.

In my painting, I was very impressed with how it turned out.  It is my favourite painting that I have done in my learning project.  Furthermore, I was able to tackle my goal of exploring iMovie and the YouTube video editor.  In my video, I decided to do a stop motion video of a picture every 30 seconds.  This allowed me to shorten my video extensively.  Through my short clip, one is able to view my painting process.  Below is the painting that I completed.

 

 

Fall Woods is a painting that I did a couple weeks ago.  It is a quick painting that anyone can do.  It is another tutorial that is done by Clive5ARt.  Clive did this painting on a smaller canvas than I have. I was a little concerned as for this was going to be difficult to adapt.  However, I was able to make this my own.

Through this painting, I was able to explore painting a landscape scene without water.  I really enjoy the paintings with water, but I wanted to make this a diverse experience.  However, my learning through this painting was using iMovie and my GoPro.  I haven’t had the opportunity to use iMovie so it was a great learning experience to learn how to use video software.  Through iMovie, I was able to speed up my painting. After uploading the 30-minute 1080p video to YouTube.  I attempted to add music to it using the free music youtube provides.  However, I struggled to attach multiple songs to the video clip.  This is something that I will continue to work with in my next art piece.

Let me know if there is anything that you would like to see in the future, or are wondering how to paint.  I can send resources or tutorials for people that want to learn how to paint.

Check out my video below:

 

 

I completed my first painting with limited use of tutorials.  On the painting, I just did I used many different types of techniques that I had used in other paintings.  I decided that I would give it a try and see what I would come up with.  Again, I was following Allision Prior’s art techniques for the painting of the sky, and the rocks, and water.  But I decided to put some mountains in the distance.  The mountains is what I needed some assistance with.  I followed a YouTube video, narrated a video by Microsoft Sam, which gave me the outline of what to complete.

I took his technique and applied it to my own painting.  The mountains turned out pretty good.  I enjoy how the darker mountains appear closer than the lighter coloured mountains.  Overall, I was pleased with the way that these mountains turned out.  The one downfall that I found using the layering method of painting is that it is very time consuming as I have to wait for each step to dry.  One painting can take up to 3-4 hours allowing each layer to dry.

The next step I followed the videos from my first painting, Landscape Painting, The Waterfall, and tried to recreate it the best I could.  However, I don’t think it turned out exactly how I wanted it to be.

Overall I was generally impressed as this piece was used with very little tutorials and I was able to use techniques I learned from other paintings to create this waterfall painting.  The finished painting is below!

Well, painting. Sorry, I haven’t been posting about my painting progress.  A bit of a recap.  My goal for the semester is to complete about eight paintings.  So far I’m just over halfway.  My most recent painting was of a beach scene.  Needless to say, not overly impressed with how this one turned out.  I followed one of Allison Prior’s painting tutorials again.  They are really excellent as they provide great detail and break the paintings into easy multiple part videos.  To put in simple this painting was a beach.

I followed one of Allison Prior’s painting tutorials again.  They are really excellent as they provide great detail and break the paintings into easy 10 part videos. Needless to say, I am not overly impressed as to how this one turned out. I decided to try to complete this one on a smaller canvas to vary the sizes of my paintings.  However, with my brushes I could not get the palm tree leaves to fall like I had wanted them too.

One of the major techniques that I focused on in this painting is using wet-on-wet.  As you have probably guessed it is using wet paint on wet paint. By using this technique you are able to blend the colour together.  I used this to blend the sun reflecting on the water as you can see above.

Above of the video playlist that I used to paint my beach scene.  If anyone wants to check out how to paint using acrylic paints I would highly recommend doing so!  Something exciting did happen this week, Allison Prior has her own Twitter account, and she has said that when you finish painting to send pictures of the finished paintings to her.  I am going to send her photos of my paintings to possibly get some feedback on my learning project.

 

I couldn’t come up with a name.  But, thank god for the internet.  There is abstract art name generator.  Needless to say it spit out, the title “Effective Shade” and I said good enough!

For this beautiful nighttime scene I followed a tutorial by Clive5art.  This guy makes it look easy.  Well… It isn’t easy.  I couldn’t get the clouds right, the trees right, or the sky the way I wanted it.  But it turned out okay. I really enjoy the shading of this piece.

This painting I did on a 8″ by 10″ canvas purchased at the dollar store.  It took me roughly 45 minutes for this painting. Clive5Art is a British artist, who posts lots of different art tutorials.  They are quick and what he calls “easy” paintings. One thing that I really liked about this video, is the set up of it.  You can always see what paint he is using and what brush he is using.  However, he moves very fast through his work.  I ended up watching him three or four times, to check to see what I had missed.  I think I will also go back and check out some of his other tutorial videos to see what he has done in his other “painting challenges”.

 

 

This is my first painting following a tutorial on YouTube, I was very impressed with the result.  I found a fairly detailed painting by artist Allison Prior. At first I thought I was a bit ambitious because I thought the painting looked so difficult.  However, following Allison Prior’s videos was a great aid because she took the time to tell you what brushes to use, as well as how to use different techniques in creating the different elements of the piece.

A couple of things I am really proud of in the piece include the bottom half of the canvas.  The rocks and the the detailed water below the waterfall I believe turned out very well.  Something that I am not impressed with is how the rocks and the water turned out above the waterfall.  I feel as I tried to overcorrect myself with this painting and it just didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to.  However, for my first “painting” (where I somewhat know what I’m doing) I think it turned out pretty good.  Overall I think I spend, two and a half hours to three hours on this painting.

For Allison Prior’s first lesson of this painting check it out below.  She does a great job of going step by step for beginning painters.  She is very detailed, and the viewer is able to keep up with her.  I will definitely try and check out other paintings by her in the future.  One thing I that I struggled with in this video included the lighting, and the quality of the video was not always the best.  At some points it was difficult to tell exactly what she was doing with the paint.   This painting is divided into ten parts, so the viewer can take it slow and go back to focus on the areas that are needed.

The Project

In #EMCP355 one of our major projects is the #LearningProject.   I will be sharing online something significant that I would like to learn, and share my progress through my blog and as well as Twitter. The catch is that we must learn this skill through online sources.  I struggled to come up with an idea of what to do.  I knew coming into the class that I had to complete this learning project.  After some thought I decided that one of the skills that I think would be neat to attempt to learn is how to paint. Specifically I want to get into painting using oil paints. However, as young painting legend, and fellow friend Kelsey explained it may be wise to start out with acrylic painting.

After some consideration and some careful deliberation I decided it might be wise to take up Kelsey’s advice.

My Experience Painting

I have never been much of a painter.  In the few attempts that I have tried I found painting to be very frustrating because I was unable to manipulate the paint the way I wanted it.  I remember growing up and doing little painting crafts with mom, and a little bit of painting during school.  Other than that I would say my painting is very limited.  I have have not taken an art class since I was in grade 7.

One of the reasons why I want to begin trying to paint is because of the painting legend Bob Ross.  Watching Bob Ross paint is oddly enough one of the most satisfying things a person can do.  There are many painting tutorials posted on YouTube, some of which I am excited to explore.  In the painting tutorials that I have watched Bob has a very laid back attitude. While Bob is painting he does not have a care in the world.  In a conversation with Bob someone once said, “‘Bob, everything in your world seems to be happy.’ [Bob replied], ‘ That‘s why I paint.  It’s because I can create the kind of world that I want, and I can make this world as happy as I want it'”.   I feel as Bob uses painting to share not only his passion but also as a way to cope with stress in his life.   I hope that through painting I find a way to find peace and maybe a way that I can deal with stress.

I am very excited to get started with painting, exploring different techniques, and sharing my learning with others along the way.  I managed to scrounge up some acrylic paint I found at the back of my desk, and bought some new paint brushes, and some cheap canvases from the Dollar Store.  After consulting the Acrylic Painting for Dummies Guide I noticed that it would be wise to invest in a palette knife, and a palette, but student budget says paper plates will have to do for now.

Keep posted for videos, photos, and tweets as my painting experience begins!

And remember,

“You too can paint almighty pictures” – Bob Ross