Learning New Painting Techniques: Blending and Layering

over 3 years ago

Learning New Painting Techniques

Here is my 2nd attempt at painting. I'm pretty weak at blending and drawing landscapes and I'm currently trying to make an epic yoda painting that I don't want to screw up. So today I decided to try and learn some new techniques.

New Techniques

I've been watching a ton of youtube videos and today I attempted to paint a landscape without a template... probably not the best idea, you'll see what I mean.

The techniques I wanted to focus on was blending and layering. Applying these to paintings makes it really stand out and look more realistic. Since I want my paintings to look professional I thought I'd practice before I put the time into a larger painting.

It may surprise you but this took me almost all day! I could probably do it faster if I did it again or if I followed a video, next time I'll probably follow a guide, that way I have the painting to give as a Christmas present. Maybe I'll give this one to someone I don't like :)

Making Progress

So here you can see how I attempted to do some layering, I started to figure it out better as I want. I guess painting really does take a lot of practice. When you watch videos, some artists make it look so easy but if you haven't tried it yourself, it's quite challenging.

I did learn one thing I will use in future photos which is using the fan brush to make tree leaves, I think those actually came out very well. The only issue is that I have no idea what kind of tree I was trying to make here.

Final

Here is the final painting. As you can see this is a landscape that doesn't really follow the rules of physics, I guess I painted a landscape from an alien world!

The issue I had is that I didn't draw the horizon line and I should have painted the ground first or at least knew how I would do the bottom part before doing the trees. I guess I should have just drawn more trees and no water, but I wanted to experiment with a gloss gel for the water, maybe it should have been a pond and not a river that starts from who knows where. It's supposed to be a manhole where the water is coming from.

With practice I'll get better, I painted this from the top of my head. I've watched a ton of painting videos but for the most part just went off memory. The lesson I learned here is that I need a plan and should follow a photo or template when I paint, I guess I wanted something unique plus I thought I was just going to draw trees and be done. Considering how much time I spent on the trees I was like, well mine as well finish now and make this a present for my mom. She'll hang it up for sure!