Of Hummingbirds and Goals

A Hummingbird, 50x50 cm, acrylics on canvas, completed 11/3/16

General inspiration stock photo, by kayaksailor

It's a present for my dear friend who needed an encouragement and a bunch of good healing energy. She loves humming birds and I just had to paint her one, this one exactly!

Some personal thoughts following this work...
It was a bit of surreal to paint this work right now because it somehow represents almost everything in art that I try to avoid right now - simple, illustrative, kitsch, acrylics.
But!
It has to be a quick, actually very quick work, and I wanted it to be special, just for my friend.
So I made the imprimatur at first with the purples and the light blues that my friend loves and I wanted to be unique with the colors of the bird and the flower.
The painting of the bird and the flower were done without any sketches, just the acrylics right on the canvas. It took no more that two hours to complete.
I know that I could make tons of works like this one and sell it cheap and quick at any art fair, but this one is special and I do not want to make tons of the same, it's just boring to copy one work thousands of times!
On one hand, I do not wish to stay at the comfort zone of cute and kitsch artworks that sells good, I try my best to keep developing and make my own real art.
But on the other hand, when it comes to special presents for dear friends and family, I really want just to make them happy and see a huge smile on their faces when they receive an art present from me.

For example there is a wood box present I've painted with oils for my Dad, it features my parents Hungarian Vizsla Lucky!

Or a wood box I've painted with oils for my Grandma's 89th birthday!

I will keep making cute, kitsch and illustrative art only as presents for my closest friends and family.

See ya with real art real soon!

Gali 

October 15 to February 16

From October 15 to February 16

There are some works of mine from the last four months. In no particular order.

If you want more information on any of these works you can find it on The Art by Gali Lutski on Facebook and Gali Lutski on DeviantArt - Olvium

Please scroll all the way down to read more!

I have neglected my blog for several months but I decided not to give up on it, this blog is a kind of a personal internet sketchbook for me and therefore is very important for me. For the past six months I am in a journey to be a full time artist, here are the works from the last four months. Some of them I love but the most of them I don't. 

Right now I am in a process of discovering the true artist in me and this is a long and an exhausting work. For the past six months I try to avoid the illustrative style, the kitsch and the realistic beauty.   I focus on finding the true contemporary traditional art in me and for me. I have lots of homework from my art tutors and it motivates me a lot to keep on the search for the true artist inside myself. I know that I have learned a lot for the past six and a half years but I have to say that I feel that in the last year and a half I just had the true "kick in the ass" both in good and bad sense. 

Realism, surrealism and illustration are simply  not enough and I am in a huge struggle between the comfort zone and the unknown "other" zone. 

From this day I will update here some of my sketches and studies, there will be less finished\complete works. 

See ya,

Gali

Plein Air Painting 1 :)

1.5 hours of work. Oil on 40x50 canvas.

It was pure fun!

Some WIPs

Apollonia - The Making of...

A photo I took in Apollonia National Park , a little sketch i did of it :)

A little 19x29cm watercolor sketch - to test the colors I had in my imagination.

Gesso application on non-primed (non-prepared) canvas,  73x56cm - Step 1
Yeeeey for my ,completely my, own studio! :)

Step 2

"Apollonia", gesso and oils on non-primed canvas, 73x56cm
Done! 2.5 hours of work in my beloved new studio. This is the first time I paint a whole new oil painting here! 

Quick Studio Exercises

 These were done at a summer Color Workshop with Guy Avital and Ran Tenenbaum tutoring.

We've done many quick studio exercises and there are the best of mine from this fulfilling workshop.

Red and green palette - quick studio exercise
oil on cardboard prepared with gesso, 54x48 cm

Model in interior - quick studio execise
7 colors palette, no mixing between the colors
oils on canvas, 72x60 cm

6 colors, no mixing between the colors, quick studio exercise.
oils on canvas with windsor blue acrylics imprimatur, 69x58 cm
Van Gogh drawings inspiration

Выхода нет - No Exit (Sketch)

 oil on cardboard prepared with gesso

25x33 cm by Gali Lutski

Сплин - Выхода нет

Сколько лет прошло, все о том же гудят провода
Все того же ждут самолеты
Девочка с глазами из самого синего льда
Тает под огнем пулемета
Должен же растаять хоть кто-то

Скоро рассвет
Выхода нет
Ключ поверни - и полетели
Нужно вписать
В чью-то тетрадь
Кровью, как в метрополитене:
Выхода нет
Выхода нет

Где-то мы расстались - не помню в каких городах
Словно это было в похмелье
Через мои песни идут, идут поезда
Исчезая в темном тоннеле
Лишь бы мы проснулись в одной постели

Скоро рассвет
Выхода нет
Ключ поверни - и полетели

Нужно вписать
В чью-то тетрадь
Кровью, как в метрополитене:
Выхода нет
Выхода нет

The Making of "The Freudian Slip" painting, April - July 2015

80x80 oil on canvas, April - July 2015
I want to thank Guy Avital and Ran Tenenbaum for their amazing tutoring.
My art is upgraded to a whole new level thanks to these amazing artists!

Facebook and Etsy Store - Art by Gali Lutski

Facebook - Art by Gali Lutski

I am glad to share my new Facebook page with you! Don't be shy follow and like :hug:
I also have some old original artworks for sale and custom commissions of wood boxes on my brand new Etsy Shop!

Etsy Shop - Art by Gali Lutski

Welcome to my Summer Cleaning - Originals for sale on Etsy!

I am finally free to be an Artist as my full time job!

3 Meetings (weeks) - Working on a new large painting - Part 2

For the past 3 meetings (actually 3 weeks at the art course and 12 hours in total) I've been working on a large painting based on my previous sketches. See my Last Post .

Week 1 - Rough oil sketch directly on canvas, and some initial colors. 

(It's approximately 80 cm height and length - Don't remember the exact size, the painting is at the studio, so I'll check next time.)

Week 2 - Playing with colors

Week 3  - Adding attention to details and reworking the colors.

And a little desert for you - A cute Raccoon in Chinese hat (from this reference), a simple sketch in my little watercolor moleskine sketch book, inspired by Pom Poko animation movie by Studio Ghibli 

Have a great weekend and see ya at the next update! :)

Inspiration Wall Exercise Part 1 - Preparation Sketches

A summary from the recent 5 weeks - 

The bottom line of this assignment is  a long process of work on an individual painting. From A-Z.

This time we had to bring different inspiration photographs/paintings of different subjects and styles - to create diversity inspiration wall of references.

After that we did a process of sketching and rethinking on our references. As a result I changed all of my references and after a second try I ended up with these amazing inspirations

Lucian Freud - my new love! And photos of Lucian Freud and his studio by the photographer David Dawson

Egon Schiele

Franz Marc

By the way everybody choose whatever they like and what inspires them just right now, from travel photos to architecture and so on...

1 - My inspirations for this exercise :)

The next stage was to play around in order to build our own composition using the inspiration wall above.
I did small and simple pencil sketches just to find the right format, composition and interior.

2 - Simple play pencil sketches.

Next stage was to create some oil studies on cardboard covered with gesso. This assignment helps to understand the color scheme vs. composition relations for the future large painting that I will do.

The colors here are mainly black/yellow/red + some green, this is to understand the tone capacity, the composition and the depth of the future work.
We also could create complement colors oil sketches - but I didn't have the time to work on this one.
The colors you see here are not the colors that you'll see on the future big painting, these are play/search sketches for depth, color and composition research.

A tip - The use of  oil studies on cardboard covered with gesso is a cheap and sexy way to an art research you need to do in order to create a decent final painting!

Cardboard sketch 1 - black/yellow/red + some green color scheme assignment  (33x23cm).

Cardboard sketch 2 - black/yellow/red color scheme assignment (49x41cm).

Cardboard sketch 3 - black/yellow/red color scheme assignment a mix of the two above (49x41cm)

some of the brush strokes here are made with my weak right hand - I am a lefty, and that day I suffered from pain in my strong left arm. 

That's all for now. The next time I hope to show some work in progress on the large painting that will be based on the composition of these sketches.

P.s. I am in love with whippets (english dog breed), I am captured for life!

Have a great weekend,
Gali