Self portrait

**CajunDave** · 03-15-2013, 01:13 PM

haha man u described me perfectly. i struggle to sit and tattoo ...it begins to drive me nuts after 35-45 minutes and i usually break after an hour and gotta take a smoke break or something. crazy thing is i only need 3 -4 minutes to talk away from the tattoo and i can sit down after that refreshed and focused . but after 45 more minutes i feel like i cant sit still any longer .
u can see this effect in alot of the old masters oil paintings.
paintings look great man! id try to add some sfumato to your work (smoke like edges). makes a huge difference with realistic painting...but tricky to pull off. also there is a realism oil painter by the name of scott waddell. he has some short videos on youtube which are amazing. definatly watch them . his video on color and chroma are so informative. made a big difference in my oil painting and my color tattooing.

**nick** · 03-15-2013, 02:02 PM

Well that's the thing. Tattooing is easy for me to sit for awhile too. Not as much as painting but I can still tattoo for a good 2-3 hrs before I need to stretch it out. Most of my tattoos are one client a day and just chill with that person the whole time and get 6 hrs of tattooing done.

What do you mean smokey edges? Do you have a link to a reference so that I could see what you mean. Sounds cool. And yeah Scott Waddell does amazing work.

**CajunDave** · 03-15-2013, 06:33 PM

the edges for the most part blend and disappear into the background. it helps the painting look like the image wasnt cut out and pasted over the background. some artist can do it alla prima which is fucking hard...most use glazes to do this. u make a glaze the same color as the background that falls next to the edge u want to smoke out (basically soften and fade with the background) and lay it over the hard edge. u do this in layers a few times with drying time inbetween. or u can try alla prima. u can also have everything dry and then break down and make a glaze of the flesh tone of the face and put a few layers of that around the edges of the face.
heres a few references . these are all paintings by david grey, amazing oil painter!

david-gray.jpg

**CajunDave** · 03-15-2013, 06:36 PM

both of these have great examples of stumato in them. second picture if u look along the back of her neck and down her shirt u can see how the paint kinda diffuses into the background leaving a hazy edge. u can also see it on the front of her neck and under her chin, the edge of the face above her eye...and the entire head of hair all has soft edges. to me sfumato is one of the techniques that can give your paintings the "it" factor.

**nick** · 03-16-2013, 01:26 AM

That's amazing. I want to try this now.i will have to do It on my next painting I start because I am already committed to my current background In the painting I am working on now. I will be doing more research on this for sure! Do you have any examples of your work? You have no idea how stoked and geeked out I am now to want to learn to do this! Thanks a ton

**CajunDave** · 03-16-2013, 02:21 AM

ive taken a break from oil painting the past 4-5 months but here is one i did last year.(shitty iphone pic) you can see heavy sfumato on the left edge of the face almost completely fading in with the background. did it by making a really transparent glaze of ivory black and medium and layering it over the edge of his face and letting it dry a few days then doing it again until desired effect was achieved.

i used it in this painting as well but i think i went a little overboard.