Oil Painting Exploration

For this project, I wanted to research and experiment with oil paint as it was a material I had not worked with before, and I love how beautiful oil paintings look, especially with the contrast and values that they can reach.

For the materials, I used my father's old oil paints and his linseed oil. Later on, I bought some new brushes, so I also bought a cheap oild paint so I had smoother white and I did end up using black even though I started without it. For each of my studies, I painted on a wooden block becuase I wanted the background to be smooth and I wanted all of the texture to be created by built-up layers of oil paint. 

Overall, I really, really enjoyed this project, with the help from some YouTube videos, I learned new techniques and got to work with a completely new material. I would say I definitely struggled with the skin tones and making the eye realistic in the beginning, but as I got to practice my own understanding of the material and ability to add layers and textures improved a lot, and I am very happy with the final works. If I could go back, I would choose a different bird or animal for the final study, as the bird was all white and I couldn't necessarily showcase many details, and it was a lot less put together than it could have been, this being said I still think that this is one of the stronger works of this year and I am happy how it came out.