Tysoe's Art Blog

Been busy the last couple of months and haven’t had much time to do the painting I wanted. Decided to put some time aside for paintimg. Just recently my wife and I started playing Dungeons & Dragons. It’s been a good 10 – 15 years since I last played. Each weekend we spend quite a few hours with some people we met at the local meetup group.

Anyway, D&D is a great game where a bunch of you sit around the table together and create an epic story together with each player playing a charactre in the game. My character is Skillgannon a Ranger ( was in a hurry and named him after a David Gemmell character). My wife Inna is playing a half elven cleric, though she really wanted a druid character, unfortunately they aren’t available yet in the new 4E rules.

Here’s the underpainting for both characters.

Skillgannon 16″x20″ Oil on canvas

Silversteine 16″ x 20″ oil on canvas

I also put together a local community Dungeos and Dragons community site up at Sac D&D

After seeing a bunch of contract jobs for Michelle Obama pin-up poster style paintings, I thought I’d have a go. I wanted to do something with a bit more classy and formal than the usual.

18″ x 20″ Oil on Canvas.

I scanned these from my sketchbook so the quality isn’t great. It’s been a long time since I really paid much attention to sketchbooks and my drawing has suffered.

I’ve been looking at some of Vilppu’s drawing videos which are excellent for learning classic drawing skills and based on the tradition of analyzing the figure rather than just copying what you see. Starting with the gesture of the pose and working from there.

These two were both done one afternoon last week, I thought I might take them further and thought them mysterious enough for a couple of paintings.

Perhaps a couple of Autumn/Winter or Halloween themed paintings…

I thought this an unusual pose with the model draped over a pile of pillows, so I made a painting. I didn’t really have a background in mind and thought I’d come up with something quite plain like the previous seated nude.

12×24 Oil on canvas

Here Winston Churchill the cuter meets the Egyptian Goddess Maat.

Still got a way to go but since I took a photo, figured I’d stick it up. 24×24″ Oil on Canvas.

This painting is for Inna my wife. Winston being one of our two pug dogs. The goddess is the Egyptian goddess of truth, law and universal order. Quite fitting considering that ordering Winnie to do anything is near impossible :). My favourite part of this painting has to be Winnies expression which I captured well and is so typical of how he looks when begging for food…

Continuing my first attempt at the classical Flemish multilayer technique I added started painting with colour for the final layers.

NUDE SITTING 9″ x 12″

The first two layers were done in acrylics for speed of drying and include the following layers:

• Gesso Priming (Acrylic Gesso)
• Sketch (Antelope Brown ink and pen)
• Imprimatura (Neutral ground Ochre, Ivory black, burnt umber)
• Umber underpainting (Burnt Umber)
• Dead Layer (Greyscale painting for dead skin tones
• Colour Layer (Final colour layer in Oils)

The idea is that the light will pass through the various layers of paint bringing out a lifelike glow remniscent of old master paintings who used this technique extensively right up to the 19th century.

Over the weekend I had a go at a small self portait. Using oils on a 5×7 inch canvas board. Overall I’m quite pleased with it. I did a quick burnt Sienna and Burnt umber mix underpainting in acrylic and painted the colour in Oils.

This is only the second oil painting I have done since I left art college over 10 years ago, so not too bad. Need to practice small details so I can work better on the eyes and mouth where my lack of confidence leaves quite a lot to be desired.

The larger image is aprox actual size on my monitor.

Above is the burnt umber/sienna underpainting and finished piece side by side.

small 7″ x 5″ portait painting from a older photo with short hair.

I almost didn’t post this one since It’s a bit weak and hesitant in the painting. Originaly the skin tones were very pedestrian and I touched them up with glazes after to make it more interesting.

Here’s  some works in progress. Just underpaintings at this point. The first one below has something new I wasn’t familiar with before called the dead layer. I started in Acrylics for speed. The dead layer is supposed to bring out extra richness in luminosity as the light passes through. How this compares to the regular underpaintings I’m more familiar with (see two below).

The next two are both started in oil.

I havent gotten the hang of photographing the paintings yet, the one below is much larger and the top right is closer to the lights.

EDIT: I have since added some primitive style clothes to the Braveheart and Huntress painting above. When I originaly did the underpainting I knew I needed something but didn’t know what. Hope to finish this one soon.