Chaotic Order - Original Oil Painting

"Chaotic Order" is an original 16" x 22" oil painting created on a 1" stretched, high-quality canvas. The painting is presented as unframed (Sides are painted).

The concept is based on watching waves. When you first see waves, there doesn't seem to be any rhythm to them, at any given time. However, the waves are reacting to the land around it. After a while, you realize that the land has a rhythm to it, the water has a rhythm to it, and the man-made shapes have a rhythm to them. All mirror one another.

All Artwork is copyrighted to Doug Hoppes Studio and is not to be copied or reproduced in any form without the permission of the artist. Sale of this item does not transfer its copyright.

Purchase Painting

Drawing Study: Cup on the side

Another drawing of a cup. I've got a lot of these around the house. This decorative tea cup was one of my wife's, Melissa, grandmothers and was passed onto Melissa. The cup is the standard thin tea cup that people held with the pinky extended.

While drawing this teacup, I used the basic procedure of drawing the full rounded ovals and then erasing the portions of the oval that is covered by another nearer object. This technique seems to work pretty well as my ovals are starting to look more appropriate and rounded.

The hardest part of this drawing involved the inside of the teacup and the floral design. The inside of the cup seems to be a bit flat. I'm going to have to study the cup more and determine what makes it look rounded.. I think that it has to do with the rounding of the shadow curves, but not quite sure. This also holds true with the design. On the saucer, there is a design of a flower, but nothing on the flower indicates that it arches upwards. I'm going to need to just draw the plate without the cup and see how the flower is drawn.

Overall, the parts that I like about this drawing are the shape of the cup/saucer, the shadows of the cup on the saucer, the tabletop/background, and the base of the cup. I thought that they were adequately done. The parts that need work are the shadows inside of the cup (too flat) and the flowers on the saucer (too flat).

Still Life: Caving Helmet

For last night's still life, I decided to work on painting my caving helmet and carabiners. The reason is due to the fact that the simplicity of the helmet is offset by the difficulty of the mass of carabiners. In addition, I like the concept of painting a not-so-clean object and seeing if I could get the textures correct.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with my effort. As usual, I toned the background and then drew the general shapes using Terra Rosa. From there, I massed in the basic colors for the objects/table based on where my light was coming from.

For instance, after defining the grey/black and white areas of the helmet, I knew that the light was coming from over my left shoulder. So, looking at the helmet, this told me that the brightest part will be above the left light and then gets darker as the helmet moves away from me. So, the brightest area had more pure titanium white and I added more shadow colors/wall colors as the helmet receded.

In addition, I knew that the yellow of the lamp on the left, being in the front, towards the light was brighter than the lamp portion in the back. Therefore, the front lamp contains more purer colors and the back one contains some color of the background in it.

The hardest part of this painting was the carabiner. With Karen's help, I was able to see how to do it. The basic technique is still massing. The darker part of the caribiner is darker than the background. By adding the highlights, the grey object now reads as metal.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with this painting. I achieved the "dirty" feel of the helmet in 3D space with duct-tape on it.

A Better Cup

Well, the last drawing of my coffee cup was pretty poor. But, you can't ignore it when something goes wrong. If it's wrong, determine what you did wrong and correct for it the next time.

So, time to tackle the drawing of the cup again. This time the results turned out much better. Why? Because I first drew the basic structure in pencil.

When drawing ovals, it's always easier to draw the full oval and then erase the portions that are covered. For example, the rim of the cup, the inner circle of the saucer and the outer circle of the saucer were drawn as overlapping ovals. Once the proportions were correct, then the area of the ovals that was hidden by the cup was erased.

Once I had the basic outline drawing done and defined the shadow areas in pencil, I just started shading. An important note is that, like painting, I cross-hatch areas of shadows rather than actually drawing distinct lines. This leads to a more even flow on the shadows.

Overall, this cup turned out pretty well. However, one drawing of a cup does not mean that I can draw cups well. Time to do it again and change the angle.

Lopsided Coffe Cup

Well, since my last still life painting of the jar was not very good, I decided that I really need to work on getting the drawing of oval objects correct. An intriguing oval object that is immediately at hand is the coffee cup on a saucer. Depending on what your angle is, you get a different form of the oval each time.

Well.... this was not good. The nice part of working in pen is that you can't correct your mistakes. At best, you have to figure a way of working them into the drawing. Okay... well, the best thing that I can say about this is that it definitely is a cup on a saucer. There is definitely a three-dimensional aspect to it.

However, the major issue is the ovals. The top of the cup is too rounded. The oval should be flatter. The right side of the cup is too straight, whereas the left side is too rounded. The shape should be the same. The back left of the saucer is too rounded. It should be flatter.

More work to do.

The beauty of working with still life objects in your house is that you can immediately see problems. When doing landscape, you have to worry about perspectives, value control and having too much to deal with. With internal still life, the object is simpler, but, in addition to the perspective and value control, the drawing HAS TO BE RIGHT. It's easier to tell that a cup is wrong as opposed to a tree branch.

Drawing Study: Trees and Rocks

As part of my ongoing study for painting the landscape, I've realized that I need to practice more of my drawings. It's been a while since I've just been playing with pen-and-ink.

Tonight, I did a study relating to a small little waterfall over some rocks. In the background is a series of trees and some fallen branches.

Still Life: jar and fruit

Well, last night class resumed again and, boy, am I out of practice with doing still life/realistic objects. Although I've been painting regularly, the stuff that I paint is all out of my head.

Last night's still life was to examine reflection in metallic objects. I did not achieve what I was trying.

Things that went well. I think that the massing of the shapes to create the fruit and the jar are good. The jar definitely looks like a realistic object. The table top and background worked out well and accentuate the jar/fruit nicely.

Okay, enough of that. Now, what went wrong. The very first thing that went wrong was the shape of the vase. It's not smooth and circular. Definite drawing problems with it. The handle is good and the opening on the top looks good. The body of the jar definitely does not have the rounded feeling. The base is definitely wrong with the right side being misshapen.

The fruit looked better than I thought. Although the darker fruit does not look like cherries and the strawberries somewhat resemble strawberries, I can do better.

The main issue (and the one that I was working the most with) was that the reflection on the jar does not look metallic. There is no shimmering surface. It looks more like a painted clay jar than a silver one. I'll have to do this again and try to see what I was doing wrong. At this time, I'm not sure. I think that it has to do with the sharpness of the reflective shape and the greytones.

Not bad since I haven't done a still life for a month, but definitely not good. More work to be done. I'll have to get my still life setup done at home so that I can practice some more.