Month: March 2023

An apple a day …

A little week ago, I got the challenge to paint an apple. And why not? I’ve painted an apple before, but at that time it was a digital painting and a realistic painting. Of an apple. Not so this time. I wanted to challenge myself and paint in a style I usually don’t try …

This is not an apple. It’s a painting of one.

I want to be able to paint looser, with rough brush strokes. Much like I did with my autumn-painting, but even rougher, using larger brushes. Trying it with an apple, well, that seemed easy enough. Not that much that can go wrong 😉

So, first, a thin brush, to make the black outline. Or well, first covering the canvas in a light brown colour, and then the outline. The next step was to find the main colours and drop them in, not worrying too much about getting it exactly right. Add some variations here and there.

Pink, yellow, orange, brown and red. That makes it a perfect red apple, right? And some dabs of different colours make the green leaves look a lot more detailed than what I painted.

I’m happy with it. I think I succeeded in what I set out to do.

Lighthouse in stormy weather

I wanted to paint a lighthouse in stormy weather, and with the help of AI I made some images that I used for inspiration

It’s been way too long since I’ve updated this blog now. Shame on me. Admittedly, I did post my lighthouse painting on Instagram, but I never got as far as writing about it here. So, time to do something about that.

A lighthouse in stormy weather

I painted this between Christmas and New Year, and was joined by mother who got inspired and wanted to paint a specific lighthouse on the Norwegian coast. One known as the most beautiful lighthouse in Norway. For me, it started with an idea: I wanted to paint a lighthouse, and I wanted it to be in stormy weather.

To achieve that I needed some reference pictures, but instead of searching for photos that I could use, I used one of the AI art generators to give me suggestions. A few tries and I got a few results that inspired me.

I mixed the ideas as I painted on the canvas; the sky from one image, the lighthouse and environment from another, and the waves varied a bit. The resulting picture is different from all of them, but I got the inspiration I wanted, and since the motive is imaginary in any case, I could easily take my artistic liberties and not make the lighthouse exactly as the picture. Although it mostly is. ????

There are still things I should practise, just to be able to paint better. There’s always something new to learn. Still, while I see the things I could do better, I’m still happy with what I made.