An Irish man in London

Johnny · April 2015

Hi All,

I've been a long time lurker but I have finally taken the plunge and joined up!
I was always a doodler but I really wanted to try my hand at painting. Having 5yo and 10mth old daughters doesn't help with the "my" time element!

I love watching painting tutorial videos on YouTube, Will Kemp, here in London and of course Mark's videos which were always a favourite.

I've had a couple of goes at painting from bad reference photos or my imagination but the results were always terrible. It's only from reading sites like this that I have gathered the correct terminology to describe what (I think) I am doing wrong... too much colour saturation (too much chroma?), too much contrast and not being subtle enough (it doesn't help that I am a comic book geek either). It's a big step up from the pencils to the paints!

Now the baby is a little bit older I have found the time to start a painting of my 5yo daughter (I'm not going to even attempt the baby, I have heard that they are ridiculously difficult to paint!). I started with a simple drawing (the easy part!), then a grey scale stage (more difficult for someone not used to paint!... was tempted to use my pencil for this

). The plan now is to use this as a base to add my colours directly to the canvas. The idea being that the values are already there. I have no idea how this will turn out... time to suck it and see!

Johnny.