Impressionic waterfall

I recently revisit the artwork of Tibor Nagy on Pinterest. He has a very interesting impressionistic style where the whole painting is out of focus, with the key focal point being given a certain amount of focus. I like it. The style speaks to me. I therefore tried to copy his style by copying one of his paintings. The result is presented below. I did not achieve his level of impressionism, but I did go more loose than my usual painting style. Overall the result is satisfactory… I can hear the water roar!

Tibor Nagy’s waterfall

Waterfall

My large screen iPad Pro with Apple Pencil is a real blessing! I use ProCreate to digitally paint on the almost almost canvas size display. I paint from reference images and usually start off using a split screen before I would go over to casting the image onto the TV or computer screens.

I am not 100% satisfied with this attempt, but decided to still post it. It is as if it appears “chalky” rather than “oily”. I aim to make all my digital paintings appear like oil paintings. I do not follow a special digital technique on ProCreate, but try to paint in the exact same style as I would using oil. For example, I do not use layers. There is off course some differences, but I try to stay as close as possible to my oil technique to avoid “brush confusion” when I switch over to oil.

Back to the painting: I found the image on Pinterest. I am reasonably satisfied with it as I can hear the waterfall roar!

A lake in the mountains

I have decided to try paintings with more detail. Here is my fist attempt on the iPad Pro. This one took me a couple of days to complete. I am satisfied with the mountains, but not with the foreground, but I will keep trying.

Rock study

I just love rocks. I grew up in the mountains and jumped from rock to rock in the river. The shadings and play of the colour values on the rocks is something that fascinates me. Here is a digital painting I made on my iPad Pro. I am trying to include the video of the painting process. Find the link here.

Note that I never use the reference image as a “stencil” but that I visually use the reference as a guideline for the painting.

More dunes

Here are some more dunes I sketched with my iPad Pro.

Another value study

I have not painted in oil for a long time. I therefore decided to first do a value study (a greyscale painting) before I jumped into full colours again. This painting is the result and I am quite satisfied. I decided to tone my canvas in a warm grey and the result was this rather warm painting of a cold theme.

I was amazed how easy it was to do this painting taken that I have not painted for months. I can only assume that the time I have spent painting on the iPad has kept my skills and technique in tune.

The painting was once again based on a painting of Mark Boedges. I am trying to copy his style and I am constantly motivated by his paintings.

Something for my wife

My interests in art differs somewhat from that of my wife and usually I am not really willing to paint her suggestions. She recently asked me to paint the painting below. I tried it and the outcome is not too bad. I tried to follow a heavy impressionistic approach and incorporated my recent cloud painting experience when painting the sky.

The painting was made using Winsor&Newton Winton oils on canvas board. The dimensions are about 40x60cm.

A view from the monastery

One of the many monasteries overlooking the Kazbegi mountains is located on the slope of the mountain overlooking Stepandsminda and also has a spectacular view on Mount Kazbegi. I took a panoramic photo from the pastures above the monastery and used that as the reference for a painting.

For this painting I started with cool greys (blue greys) and then added neutral greys and greens to it. This is the first didtal painting of the Kazbegi region that I am really satisfied with. I am starting to develop huge respect for those painters who manage to capture nature in plein air.

Kazbegi j- greyscale

After my initial attempts using colour, I tried to “paint” the Kazbegi mountians using a greyscale foundation. It is still not the result I am looking for, but closer. For this digital painting I put down a warm grey foundation painting and then touched it up with colour and cold greys. I think Imshould have rather started with cool greys. It was a plain air approach with some touch-ups at home. I am not satisfied with the depth in the painting.

Mount Kazbegi

Most painters will be able to tell you that getting the colour right is the key to a successful painting. I have been using my iPad Pro with ProCreate over the last couple of months with great success to duplicate other paintings or to paint from images. This morning was my first attempt to use ProCreate to do an oil-like painting from real-life. My subject was Mount Kazbegi in Georgia as seen from our guest house. I have not done many plein air paintings of mountains, so I had to play with value and colour. I have a couple of pre-set palates in ProCreate, which helps to create some boundaries and so that everything is not going all crazy. This is actually exactly what successfull landscape painters such as Scott L. Christesson says. Here suggests using a limited palette to reduce the amount of colour decisions you have to make and ensuring that you focus more on the right values than on mixing millions of colours.

Overall the result is satisfactory for a first attept. I think I should try to perform a grey-scale or sepia plain air paintng of the mountains to train my eye to see the correct vales.