#paintingstudy

The Absinthe Drinker, 1901

Pablo Picasso

I used to think I couldn’t paint.

I tried for years. I’d spend 10, 12 hours on a piece… and still feel lost. The colors were there, the effort was real, but something always felt off.

What changed everything wasn’t a fancy brush, a new app, or a tutorial. It was learning this:

Good painting = clear values and solid shapes.

That’s it.

I started doing black & white value studies. Just two values: black and white. No opacity. No pressure sensitivity. One hard-edged brush. No excuses.

Suddenly, my work started to read.

When you limit your tools, your brain steps up. You’re forced to make decisions. To simplify. To see.

If a painting works in black & white, it’ll work in color. If your shapes are clean, your forms will make sense. Value is more important than color. Always.

Want to level up?

Start with 10 black-and-white studies. Use strong lighting references. Stick to one flat brush. Squint. Zoom out. Repeat.

@shiningknight117 and I were chatting in the comments of my last post about the lighting/coloring I've been playing with recently. I haven't been drawing digital for all that long so I am still learning the software. Anyways, gradient maps are what I learned this week! And they do remind me an awful lot of the studies I was doing previously.

All of these were done in 2021 - 2022. Right after this, I fell into a horrible art block until around April 2024.

I checked my files/notes and sadly I do not have the references saved for the vast majority of these. All of these except 2 are based on various models / gel photographs. One I shot the reference myself and one was created from my imagination.

Mostly mixed medium of: watercolor, gouache, acrylic, and color pencil -- all, mix of a few or just one.

These two I do have the references for: here and here.