P39 Painting

[Aimless]

So I'm trying to learn how to paint.  I painted a few beginner things from a book here or there, but lost a little motivation.  I thought long and hard about what I might be motivated to paint.  So I decided to attempt to do an airplane.  Where can I find a good picture of an airplane?  Aces high screenshots.

This is my attempt at painting the screen shot found here:

[titanic3]

Did you use a pencil first? Draw the outlines of the plane and to proportion, then you can start painting. Most of my artwork are pencil sketches but I did paint a few times. You have to learn how to draw first before painting. Use a ruler.

Compare the nose of the picture and your painting. Yours isnt straight.
If you take a ruler and place it on the wings, they line up almost perfectly but at an angle. In your painting, they are not and therefore give a flat look.
The nose and tail are not proportional to each other.
Add some shadows as well, the left horizontal stabilizers should be slightly darker than the right because the rudder is casting its shadow on it. (or vice versa based on where you want your light source to be).

Painting is hard and it takes tons of practice, but for a first attempt, not bad at all, so don't feel bad at the above criticism. Again, remember to draw with a pencil first! You can easily erase a mistake, once you feel that the proportions is right, you have to know where you want your light source to be, visualize the shadows, pick your colors, and use paint strokes that is in the direction of the object (I.e. if you're painting wings, use lateral strokes, if you're painting the rudder, use vertical strokes)

[Aimless]

I did use a pencil first, but things changed pretty quickly once I started slapping paint on.

I appreciate the critisim.  I'll try the direction of the strokes on the next one, I haven't been too happy with the way the paint looks up close on the strokes of this one.  All kinda random looking.

Right now I'm not trying to bother with shadows and highlights too much.  Just trying to get a flat image of what I see and draw.  I figure I'll work my way up to it.  This is in acrylic, and from what I've read, you can keep slapping more paint on top of it later without ruining it.  So after I practice some lighting I may come back and fix it.

[Soulyss]

I never took to painting like I did to drawing but some things will transfer over.  Start by looking at the source material analytically,break it down into basic shapes and pay attention to the relationships between the different parts.  I would squint or intentionally look at the source material out of focus so I wouldn't have pre conceived ideas of what it "should" be but instead forced myself to look at the basic shapes.  From there I would work in more detail a layer at I time.  Controlling a paintbrush I think is much, much:-)more difficult than comtrolling a pencil, or piece of charcoal.

[ink]

take a hard lead pencil and Draw out 2" squares...on your canvas

take a thick(couple mm at least, will last ya) piece of clear plastic....size at least 6"by 6"..... scribe 1/4" squares on it

place the plastic over the art and draw on the canvas what is in each square...you can go so far as to measure the distances and get an exact copy.....

pencil outline first.....

then thinned gray watered down paint to form the shapes...building up as you go....use thin paint with lots of layers.
 

[The Fugitive]

Like what these other guys are saying, paint what you see, NOT what is there. Weird I know, but this is how it works.

"What is there" is a sharks mouth on the side of a P39.

"What you paint" is small off-white triangles, 2 small ones then a larger one all pointing downward. These continue as 3 small, 1 big, 2 small and so on getting smaller as you go. Above that is a dark line, not quite black, but dark. It's about half as wide as the small triangles and follows them in a bowed shape toward the end of the triangles.

See what I mean? INKs trick with the graph style is a great way to get the drawing layout the way you want it.

Don't get discouraged. They all won't come out the way you want them to, but with practice, more and more of them will.

[ink]

Like what these other guys are saying, paint what you see, NOT what is there. Weird I know, but this is how it works.

"What is there" is a sharks mouth on the side of a P39.

"What you paint" is small off-white triangles, 2 small ones then a larger one all pointing downward. These continue as 3 small, 1 big, 2 small and so on getting smaller as you go. Above that is a dark line, not quite black, but dark. It's about half as wide as the small triangles and follows them in a bowed shape toward the end of the triangles.

See what I mean? INKs trick with the graph style is a great way to get the drawing layout the way you want it.

Don't get discouraged. They all won't come out the way you want them to, but with practice, more and more of them will.

this is the most important part

[titanic3]

Like what these other guys are saying, paint what you see, NOT what is there. Weird I know, but this is how it works.

"What is there" is a sharks mouth on the side of a P39.

"What you paint" is small off-white triangles, 2 small ones then a larger one all pointing downward. These continue as 3 small, 1 big, 2 small and so on getting smaller as you go. Above that is a dark line, not quite black, but dark. It's about half as wide as the small triangles and follows them in a bowed shape toward the end of the triangles.

See what I mean? INKs trick with the graph style is a great way to get the drawing layout the way you want it.

Don't get discouraged. They all won't come out the way you want them to, but with practice, more and more of them will.

Yep, that's pretty much how I do my sketches. You have to "see" the lines and shapes that make up an object. Something simple like drawing a box. There's no shape that is called "box", there's squares and rectangles. You have to see the squares and rectangles first to draw the box. Obviously, that's a very simple example and as you draw more detailed objects, you may have to "see" shapes inside of shapes and overlapping shapes.