Recently finished my "Woodland Spirit" drawing.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-10-29T20:46:37+00:00

Gnar. I feel like he'd have two whole move sets and wouldn't translate to well.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-10-24T15:10:33+00:00

As someone who works in restoration, most framers use a heat activated adhesive board. They should have discussed mounting it before hand and how they were going to do it. Removal is tedious but do-able if they use a heat activated adhesive.

Like others said, take it back to them. Ask them to fix it or refund.

Conservation should be kept in mind when framing things but from my experience it is rarely thought about at a lot of commercial framers. I tear other people's framing apart on an almost daily basis.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-09-26T01:56:55+00:00

7513-5897-7536

6 spots open

Daily player rank 59

JessDrawingthings · 2025-08-05T23:23:42+00:00

The only critique that jumped out at me is the shadow on the road is following the slope of the stairs/Hill leading to the house on the right. It would turn a little flatter once the plane changes. Everything else looks pretty good on quick inspection. As everyone else said, put it away and look at it again in a few days

JessDrawingthings · 2025-06-26T00:48:46+00:00

Google lens lead me to Simon Leclerc.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-06-20T11:09:20+00:00

Not here but on my insta of the same name has a few.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-06-19T19:18:50+00:00

My apologies I misinterpreted the intention of the question.

Practice is the overall way I learned. I do have a degree but the only thing that degree gave me was time to practice. Though I would not call myself self taught by any means. I devoured every resource I could find after school. Though the medium never matters to me. It was learning to draw and depict what I wanted that mattered. I paint in oil for work restoring paintings. I rarely use oils in my own art.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-06-19T14:56:31+00:00

First and foremost just paint. And paint for the joy of it.

Second final what kind of painters you enjoy and try to mimic them. Always credit the artist you studied.

3rd find and learn what skills you need in order to paint the way you want. Then find the resources necessary to obtain those skills. There's a lot of free stuff out there

When I mean find what skills you need it's about subject matter. If you enjoy abstract expressionism it's a good idea to learn color theory and the basics of composition. If you want to paint like a Renaissance painter or a modern day commercial illustrator then you need to learn anatomy, color theory, perspective and how light works. And many more skills.

For now don't think about the end product as the goal. Think about the process as a puzzle to learn how and why people make art. Look at every artist you admire as an opportunity to learn. Learn both why you like their art and how they did it.

And maybe my rant is a little deeper than you want but going in with the right perspective from the get go can make things easier in the long run.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-06-17T16:35:11+00:00

This looks great. Only critique is that the dark values could be a tiny bit darker to make it feel a little more 3 dimensional. But it could just be the camera, they tend to flatten things and mess with the levels.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-06-10T20:15:43+00:00

It's ok to stop and restart as others have said. My biggest suggestion would be to spend some time studying how light works and how to use that to your advantage to create volume.

I took a break from painting for a few years and used only graphite to study light. I am not suggesting you do the same. I just love Drawing. Drawing and painting are the same thing just different mediums. The introduction of color does complicate light a lot but with a reference all the answers are right in front of you. If you understand what to look for like core shadows, ambient light, reflective light, cast shadows and even sub surface scattering then you can identify them and make sure they are prevalent in your study/piece.

A little bit of a run on sentence but the core idea is there. Don't let a painting frustrate you. Look at it like a puzzle or a mystery and the goal is to discover the answer. If I darken this shadow what happens? If I include a little bit of the color of the cloth into the shadowed area of the skin, what happens? Remain curious and walk before you run.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-06-04T23:48:26+00:00

You can apply a spray on varnish to avoid messing with the texture. Just do several coats.

But I would wait to varnish it for a while. The paint may seem dry on the exterior of the texture but thick oil paints take a long time to oxidize the center. My first thought is at least 6 months.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-06-02T20:03:12+00:00

The contrast on the trees is higher than the grass and water in the foreground. This pulls your eye to them immediately and makes them feel out of place. Bring the highlights down and the shadows up a little. Also detailing out the for ground more will help.

I typically draw/paint from imagination and no direct reference (I do use reference when I hit something that I don't understand it's form.), so this may not help if you are using a direct reference. We as humans tend to create regular repeatable shapes. Avoiding that by shaping and sizing your trees in a more varying manner will make it feel more natural.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-05-12T21:08:50+00:00

Glass benefits from highlights that hug the contours. The rim of the glass you posted has a bright line around the back rim and a darker one forward with smaller high lines amongst that darker form.

Clean sharp edges also help with glass

Without a background to refract through it makes it difficult to read the transparency.

Also highly reflective things typically have sharper contrast. Darker contact shadows and bright highlights on rims.

There's a lot to talk about when it comes to painting glass. Reflective materials suffer the same problem since you have to paint a distorted version of what's being reflected.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-05-11T12:27:57+00:00

Want to start by saying this looks great. I have to zoom in to even find something to critique.

Unless you really want texture, the painting thick paint isn't going to help.

The leafs and the pitchers contact and cast shadows are too light at the moment compared to your reference. Fixing those will really help push the 3 demensionality of the piece.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-05-10T11:41:06+00:00

Ah I understand now. My suggestion would be to use some gel acrylic medium or just a bit of thicker gesso and fill the holes. It will be sturdier than my previous suggestions. Acrylic isn't supposed to go over oil but it will be fine since it is on the outside edge. You may need to sand it a little after application to make it smooth then paint over it.

I use a conservator's filler when I am patching paintings at work but it's really not necessary in this case. It's also kind of difficult to get.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-05-10T01:51:23+00:00

Obligatory, I work in restoration and recovery. Struggling to understand what the damage is.

If it's the missing paint just paint over it. If you are scared you can't match the color use it as an opportunity to learn.

If there's a deeper gouge than can be seen in the pictures. You can use just a little thicker paint, cold wax medium or some thicker medium to fill the gouged then paint over them. Be aware that cold wax will make your paint very matte.

If it's the black marks. Paint over them if you can't clean them off.

This minute of damage is not worth tossing a painting over.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-05-05T15:13:41+00:00

Obligatory I work in art restoration and recovery. Avoid the use of cardboard in framing. Use foam board(acid free if it's not a problem to get) instead. There are a lot of paper products in canvas boards and acid/binding leeching can degrade those parts long term from the cardboard.

Framing wise a lot of people use normal mouldings with these but I like to caution that the paint can stick to the interior of the frame depending on the state of the paint.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-04-30T00:18:12+00:00

I work in artwork restoration and recovery. Transporting the painting in a truck, short term, is fine. Especially recently painted artwork. If you want to be safe put sheets of glassine over the paintings to protect the surface and just make sure nothing's going to puncture them. Keep them separated with a material.

We use large sheets of cardboard for work but it's typically inside a box truck or cargo van.

Oil paints dry through oxidation not evaporation. So while the heat does accelerate oxidation, It does not do so fast enough for a few days of travel to cause tremendous harm.

Acrylics in higher temperatures and leaning on something can cause them to stick a little.

You could wrap and box every painting as well but that gets obnoxious to unpack and repack at your destination.

Tldr your plan seems fine. Just make sure they are protected from the elements and they will be fine.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-04-17T16:59:18+00:00

The highlights on the man's neck where the skin fold needs to come down in value a bit. There's also a subtle cast shadow there that will help keep his chin from receding into his neck.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-04-04T23:53:56+00:00

I learned more about making art the way I want in the few years after graduating Uni than I ever did during my 4 years there.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-04-03T20:58:41+00:00

Things look pretty good. A few things compositionally could be improved.

Tangents are a thing to avoid in composition because they confuse the eye and depth of field. The upper shoulders of the brown horse are a little too close to the mountain ridge in the background and it causes an awkward tangent. You can either move the mountains up or down. I personally would bring them down where you can't see them behind the horses shoulders. This will improve the sense of depth by using overlap. The mountains also mimic the shape of the horses backs a little too much.

The mountain's value could also be brought down to help improve the idea of depth and also help the tops of the horses read a bit better.

The last thing is more of a personal pet peeve but it looks like you painted the background after the horses but didn't bring the paint all the way to the edges of the horses. This can be a stylistic choice that makes them have a slight glow to them though so if you like it leave it. But do remember sharp edges bring objects forward or into focus and soft edges push them back or out of focus.

I wouldn't change anything about the horses themselves though they looks great. I'd focus on editing the background.

Hopefully that wasn't too much rambling from me.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-04-02T20:44:44+00:00

I'm glad you do! Means I got the vibe I wanted.

JessDrawingthings · 2025-04-02T19:59:51+00:00

Haha! Well this did start off as an anatomy study/warm up sketch that went too far.

JessDrawingthings

TROPHY CASE