My painting- oil on canvas

Oil on canvas is one of my favorite drawing techniques, besides drawing with a pen.
This painting technique is very complex and I can say that it is difficult to deal with it. Initially, it was heavy to me to deal with oil painting, however, I think it's going very well right now. This painting technique has many drawbacks, but these defects can also be its virtues. For example, what bother many people is the long period of time needed to dry the image itself, however, on the other hand, it is positive that the image can be corrected just because of this slow color drying. My images usually dry for several months to a year, depending on the applied color layer, as well as the size of the image itself. I usually use a few colors - black, white, yellow, red, green, blue, and I get all the other colors by mixing the ones I already have, because I think that the color obtained by mixing is more realistic than the purchased color, and for that reason I prefer the mixing of colors.

As you probably know, this technique was created long ago, when Van Gogh, Leonardo da Vinci and many other famous painters lived. It is believed to have originated in the fifteenth century in order to overcome many of the painter's directions. I like the style of Van Gogh very much, and I think that he could be a good example for me. I love his way of doing things, somehow in each painting you can see that it was easy for him to draw things, that he did not have a problem with it. However, I can not say that for myself. Since I did not go to classes and I did not have anyone to teach me to draw, my drawing problems appear to me, because my hand is never relaxed, and everything has to be drawn in the way I want it, just in millimeters.

The positive side of this type of painting is the durability of the colors itself. For drawing you should used oil, I personally use olive oil, but due to this oily composition, it can happen that the canvas absorbs too much oil and paint, which can cause the canvas itself to burst. For this reason, the way of drawing on canvas is another problem ... the first layer must always be thin, so that the large amount of colors does not reach the canvas, and when the first layer is dried, the paint can be applied in several layers, so then the fear of breaking the canvas no longer exists.

For today, I have prepared my new-old painting with oil on canvas. In fact, I painted this (photo 2) a few years ago, but now I did not like it anymore, so I decided to fix it (photo 1). I did not like the second picture because of a thin layer of colors, as well as the weaknesses of the colors themselves, and also because of my amateurism. I think that I am much more prepared for this way of drawing now, and because of that I have decided to correct my work and see, the results are drastic. I hope you like it, however, if you do not like it, I expect you to give me tips on what to change in my drawing mode. :)

Below are the pictures of my drawing, as well as the parts of the drawing during work ...

As I have already said ... the first two images are the comparison of my work from 2015 (photo 2) and my work from 2018 (photo 1).

The first thing I wanted to change was the color of the sky itself. I wanted the sky to be very pronounced and be at the center of attention. I decided to reddish, with a mixture of a little yellow and orange around the sun, and of course a shift from a brighter to a darker shade and vice versa.

As you can see, the rusty stones were light gray, with the addition of a pencil, but now I decided to darken it and make a shadow on everyone on the left.

I added more red colors to the river, to see the sky reflected, and a little yellow for the reflection of the sun. I decided to cover the lasts in red, and cover the mountains in black, because I liked this picture more.

In this part of the picture, I had the most problems since it asked for the most work. For drawing grass on this wall I lost about three hours because I used a brush of size 1 and a large amount of green, as well as different shades of green and black. For this part of the picture, I tried the most and made the most number of moves with a brush.

There was a drawing of the grass. It was the second hardest thing to me since the previous one, and I was also struggling. I used a brush of size 1, 2 and 3 and also the same color as in the previous part of the image. The first layer of color was very light green, so I overlay it with black color. I wanted my picture to be much darker and more striking than the one I first drew. After applying the black color, I waited a several hours to dry it, then took different shades of green, white and gray.

Earlier, the tree had one crochet and now I decided for several smaller crochets. I used the same colors as for grass and the shades are shifted from left to right. I colored the left side of the tree in black and the parts closer to the sun are getting brighter.
I used a brown for the tree and branches, which also shifts from left to right, from black to light brown...

And finally, the river. I decided that the river would be brighter than anything else, because I watched this picture as a picture taken by the flash before sunrise. Since flash leaves things closer to the camera brighter and the background darker, I decided for this contrast. For the river I used the most white color and light blue I made myself.

And photo of me and my work...

I hope you like my post. Enjoy! :)