Octopus painting
I also like to keep the paint thin so I can begin to build layers which gives the form a more luminous quality. I used water and gloss medium to thin my paint, and kept my panel flat on the table so I didn’t get any unwanted drips. Once I was done with the drawing I began to paint an octopus by adding Light Blue Permanent to the underside. I studied both images carefully adding some of my own details while editing others. I drew my picture directly onto a birch panel very lightly and made changes as I went. Some of the tentacles came from the first photo and the others came from the second. Instead what I did was take elements that I liked from each photo and mixed them together to create my own unique cephalopod. Since I used two photos for my painting the grid method didn’t work so well. For example, if your reference photo has 1″x 1″ squares you can make the ones on your surface 2″x 2″ just make sure you have the same number of squares on both your reference photo and your surface. If you are making your painting larger than the image you have, you can increase the size by making the squares on your surface larger. Once you have a grid drawn on your image you will make a grid on your surface (blank paper or canvas) with an equal number of squares that you put on your image. To make a grid draw 1″x 1″ squares across the entire image of your reference like the photo on the right. This helps break the picture down into smaller increments and makes it easier to copy. If you have a hard time drawing then try using the grid method to copy it onto your surface.
If the drawing is bad it is very unlikely that the paint will save it, so I spend time on the drawing and get it exactly where I want it.
In my opinion this is one of the most crucial parts of a representational painting. Now that I have some good references I can start to work on my drawing. The images I used to create this painting are shown on the right. After I find a couple of images I open them in Photoshop and flip them around so they are facing the opposite direction, this helps to deviate from the original photo and gives me a good direction to create my own picture. I want my paintings to be as original to me as they can be. Also I want to be sure to draw from photos and not someone else’s illustration. For example, when I use images from the internet I make sure that I am using more than one photo. If I don’t have any of my own references then I will compose a drawing from a variety of photos. The best references to use are from my own sources like sketches, life drawings or photos that I took. With any representational painting the first thing I do is find a good reference to look at. Although this blog post is titled “How to Paint an Octopus” the process can be applied to any subject.