New Animal Portrait

A new animal portrait recently completed and a winning entry in a local art competition.  More updates of new paintings will follow. I have mainly been working on portraits.  

Below is another portrait I finished awhile ago...

New painting

New E-book for beginner oil painters

I have recently completed a new e-book for beginner painters.  It has lots of really fun stuff and lessons for beginners to try and get more confidence.  Just go to my website www.oil-painting-for-beginners.com and click on the bottom menu button. Or you can click on the link below to check it out.


http://www.oil-painting-for-beginners.com/how-to-oil-paint.html

Still painting and learning

Hi all, it has been awhile since my last posting. On the left is a photo of a portrait I have done recently. This is Harry. It is a 3/4 length portrait I worked on at a portrait workshop I recently completed. I learned so much at that course. I needed lots of help with my brushwork techniques and have improved quite alot from taking this class. Since painting Harry I have gone on to paint a few other portraits which I will try to post on this blog in future postings. I found the eyes (for me) are the key to painting a successful portrait. I will continue to paint portraits and try to improve my skill.

Where has the time gone?

Wow i hadn't realized how long it has been since i have posted in this blog. I have been busy painting new paintings and posting them on my website. Here is one of the new ones i've done for anyone interested in seeing: This painting is called "Black Mountain" and is a landscape of an open cut mining area in South Australia. It is a smallish painting about a 12" x 12" size.
I have been painting landscapes for many years and have decided to go more into painting portraits. You should paint what you enjoy doing. I will probably go back to landscapes again, but would really like to increase my skills in portrait paintings. Also, another helpful hint for artists learning to paint is get many books on the topic you are learning as these will definently help you increase your skills. I have learned so much from my art books and am always going back to them for reference material or just to remember about something i was trying to do with the painting. In the painting listed above i had to learn how to make the special green colours here in Australia. They are typical to the trees here and i had to get some "australian red gold" paint that Art Spectrum manufactures and mix Ultramarine blue or yellow or white to get the special Australian green colour that is native to the area here.

Updates on new paintings

Hi all, I haven't posted recently as I have been busy painting in my studio. I have been working on several new paintings and am pretty excited about them. I recently did a new self portrait and have posted it in my gallery website here http://www.marilouoloughlin.com Just click on the Gallery button and go to Portraits and scroll down to the bottom and you will see what I look like in a painting. Sign my guest book and leave a comment if you like.
In this posting I will put in the floral painting I have recently been working on. Here it is ...
This is a smaller painting; about 8" x 8" on stretched canvas.
Also, just wanted to remind those artists who would like to contribute information to the other website http://www.oil-painting-for-beginners.com that I have set up a number of the websites pages so that other people can add new pages to the site to make it have more information and just grow and be a wealth of information to people who are interested in learning how to paint. You can add you website or blog under the Artist Directory and get another link to your site as well. If you have some good content you would like to share on the site, don't be shy, go ahead and enter it in the site. Eventually I would like to have it set up where people can go to their favourite artist contributor to the site and get updated with new information. I will be pretty busy the next few weeks with Christmas coming up and the new year stuff so will try to do the next post in early January. I wish you all a great Christmas and happy New Year. Keep painting, you will get better!

Still Life painting

I purchased a couple of Capsicum peppers or "bell peppers" in the shop recently and set them up under a lamp to give them some good lighting with shadows. I wanted to have some brilliant colours in this small piece (6"x8") size. I have found I do a much better job of painting when I can paint the "real" thing instead of using a photo. But I still use photos as reference material. I had to paint this small piece relatively in one short painting session as the peppers were starting to go "off" the next day as I noticed they were beginning to wrinkle and turn brown in areas. But I was pleased with the result and this is a nice cheery painting.
Also, for those artists who visit my other site http:www.oil-painting-for-beginners.com
I have decided to open the site for other artists to enter information to help keep the site informative and alive and growing. This will definently improve the site and give it more valuable information if I'm not the only artist entering information to help people learn. There are a number of pages that request information from viewers including the gallery menu button which I am opening up as a "Artist Directory" for other artists to have their website or blog links listed in that area. This will be good for the artists too as it will give them another link for their site to improve their traffic with. I am not the "end-all, be-all" authority to learning how to paint with oils and would like other artists to have their say about this topic whether it be what paints are the best to helping with critiquing new artists paintings. If you have any further suggestions on how the website could be improved please leave a comment or email me through the contact me button on the site. Hope everyone has a great Christmas! And happy New Year!