American oil portraits from photos and fine art

Waiting: For Jean Paul

behnes — Sat, 04 May 2013 14:22:11 +0000

Here is another in the ‘Waiting’ series. 16×20 oil on panel

Waiting: For Jean Paul

The post Waiting: For Jean Paul appeared first on American oil portraits from photos and fine art.

Self Portrait 1

behnes — Wed, 23 May 2012 18:41:40 +0000

I received a postcard from the Cincinnati Art Museum with a self portrait of Edward Potthash. Thought I’d try one with a same type of stern expression. His background was cadmium red but I, of course, went with warm gray. It’s still wet. Will take another picture of it when it’s dry enough to varnish. I wanted to go for the old Dutch style colors but with modern brush strokes.

12×16 oil on 1 1/2 gallery wrapped canvas

The post Self Portrait 1 appeared first on American oil portraits from photos and fine art.

Prolific week – Schmid portrait copy

behnes — Sun, 13 May 2012 21:19:12 +0000

Got some more painting in before my sister left. It was a beautiful day so we painted outside. We wanted to try a different skin tone and found a great sketchy portrait by Richard Schmid in his book Alla Prima which we are borrowing from the library (since the cheapest you can find it is $65). Here’s the set up.

And the three paintings. One’s not finished yet.

All three are 9×12 oil on stretched canvas 3/4 inch gallery wrapped.

Here is the weeks bounty. Not all are finished and not sure when they will be but it was a good run!

The post Prolific week – Schmid portrait copy appeared first on American oil portraits from photos and fine art.

Painting with my sister

behnes — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:43:56 +0000

We got a chance to do some painting together (my mom, sister and I). We’re trying all types of stuff. Here are some of the pieces we did the past 2 weeks.

A close friend of the family – this is a 6×6 oil on panel version

My Sister journaling – 5×7 oil on stretch canvas

We got the composition from the online art magazine ‘artist on art’ which is fantastic. There was an article by Casey Baugh and the painting was called ‘Backlit’. It worked out well with Sharon as the model and a Renoir-y palette.

I wasn’t fully satisfied so did another one on a 9×12 stretched canvas but with a slightly different pose. I’ve been watching an instructional video by Donato Giancola which is very helpful and I can see the influence already. It came out really sad looking though. Not the best photo of it. When we get a sunny day maybe I’ll take another pic.

9×12 oil on gallery wrapped stretched canvas

We found a great painting in an advertisement in Plein Air magazine by Lynne Lockhart of a small bird. The one in the ad isn’t on her site but something very close is here. Sharon and I each did one on 6×6 panels. Can you tell who did which one?

Hopefully you didn’t look at the signatures.

Last but not least, while Sharon finished her bird then prepared dinner I did an oil sketch of my Dad. The picture reference is from when we were in the hospital waiting room. I think it could make an interesting series of people sitting, waiting. This is a 20×24 oil on gallery wrapped canvas.

The post Painting with my sister appeared first on American oil portraits from photos and fine art.

Wedding gift oil painting on panel

behnes — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 16:14:16 +0000

Here is a commission for a wedding gift. It’s slightly larger than I usually do (8×8) since the usual size would make the two faces appear too small.

Intreged by the post by Brian Burt (the artist that lives a couple miles from my house) about a painting he did with Gamblin’s Torrit gray I thought I would try a ‘black and white’. Gamblin makes great paint but is on the luxury high end, in my opinion. When I get some more cash I will be sure to buy some more Gamblin products. This is Brian’s description:

“If you are unfamiliar with this color or the company, each year Gamblin recycles the clean off and left over colors from that years production and blends them together to form a grey, which the sell in a limited run as Torrit grey. Every year is different, sometimes you might get one that’s a bit green, sometimes a bit blue or red. This year the grey is a wonderfully warm grey with yellow and red notes throughout.”

Well I had a pallet worth of mostly dried paint that I left during my vacation. So I got out a pallet knife and started digging and made a rather beautiful warm gray. Some alizarim crimson was in good shape from my last portrait and gave it some interest. Voila! Behnes torrit gray!

If money pooped... this is what it would look like

I am very pleased with the results. Will post a better picture when it’s dry.

Here is the time lapse video:

The wet portrait:

The post Wedding gift oil painting on panel appeared first on American oil portraits from photos and fine art.