Oil Painting - Assessing Your Work and Making Corrections

Posted: Feb 17, 2011 |

After you've completed a still life study, it's time to assess your work. As you begin to paint, you may find that you're unsatisfied with your work but you can't identify why. Something just seems to be wrong. Lots of artists go through the same thing. Here we offer some points about how to look at your work and check the drawing and composition for your painting:

Look though the viewfinder to determine whether the shapes, sizes, and positions of the objects look correct. Do they look like they were drawn from the correct eye level? Often just looking through the viewfinder makes the mistakes apparent.

Use your paintbrush handle to sight the angles and sizes of the objects as described in the "Sighting and measuring" section earlier in this chapter. You can also use this sighting technique to find the central axis for the geometric objects, and check to see whether the objects look plumb. Use the paintbrush handle held horizontally to check the baselines for each object and compare them to the baselines in your painting for the relative positions of the objects.

Do the sizes of the objects have a proportional relationship to the size of the format? Do they look like they're lost in space, or are they too cramped within the edges of the canvas?

Checking the painting:

Did you create a wide range of value? Can you find dark grays, middle grays, and light grays in your composition?

Did you pay attention to the background and other parts of the painting, aside from the objects?

Have your objects been painted as a series of areas of different values? They shouldn't look outlined and filled in like objects in a coloring book.

Remember that this project is a learning device or an experiment. If you see things that you want to change, here are some tips:

You can redraw through the wet paint with the tip of your palette knife. Just use it to scratch the correct line. Then you can paint up to that edge.

If you have excess paint of the wrong color in an area, you can remove the paint with either a palette knife (if it's very thick) or with a rag (more likely). Don't apply any solvent to the canvas — it will only create a mess. Cover your finger with the rag, and wipe the excess paint off. As you wipe, turn the rag to expose a fresh, dry area, and continue to remove paint until you've removed the excess. You may have to wait until the canvas is a bit dry to repaint.

Relentlessly picking at a painting is like beating a dead horse. Paintings should look fresh. If you can't leave the painting alone, get another canvas and do another study of the same setup.

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