© Katie Jeanne Wood
Oil portrait painting
daily painting: 364 day art project
Day 361
If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.
Peace Pilgrim
People have told me they don’t paint because they can’t draw. My advice is always this: you don’t have to be good at drawing to be an artist/painter. You actually don’t have to draw at all. Not today or any day. I know plenty of artists who don’t start their paintings by drawing first.
© Katie Jeanne Wood
WIP
Oil portrait painting
daily painting: 364 day art project
Day 362
While I greatly admire the work of artists who draw well, I hate to draw, myself. Well, maybe not hate hate, but it’s not how I like to spend my time. I’ve heard it relaxes some artists, but it gives me great anxiety for some reason..probably because I know I’m not good at it. I don’t even like to doodle. If left alone with a pencil and paper, I prefer to write, not draw. This is why I keep my line drawings simple. I don’t shade or get fancy with crosshatching. It’s just not my thing, and yet somehow I’ve survived as an artist for many years now.
It takes a great deal of patience to make a good drawing, and I have zero. I figure I’m going to cover up the drawing with paint anyway, so why work that hard? I don’t like to waste time or energy, and I’m incredibly lazy when it comes to things I don’t like doing.
© Katie Jeanne Wood
Oil portrait painting
WIP
daily painting: 364 day art project
Day 363
That said, I’m also not comfortable staring at a blank canvas for hours or days, wondering what I’m going to paint or how to begin, so that’s why I do a quick contour line drawing to get the ball moving. I don’t spend much time on these drawings, maybe 2 or 3 minutes tops. I use the lines as a jumping off point only, which is subject to change as I move forward with the painting.
A tip for line drawing: Use watercolor pencils because you can easily erase lines with a tiny bit of water, no eraser needed. When I use a No 2 pencil, as I did in this drawing, I always get black smudge lines when I erase, which you can see in the first photo.
When you’re painting with oils, as I did, the oil tends to smear the pencil lines and the smudges created with the eraser react with the paint. This painting got pretty ugly, and I had to wipe the oil off her chin a couple times because it was black smeared mess. If you’re painting an oil portrait, it’s better to use a red watercolor pencil in your line drawing because it blends in better with the paint.
Some links I found about line drawing:
Line drawing: a guide for students