Seeing my favorite paintings for the first time💫

Hello everyone and welcome back to my channel. Today I thought I'd share some of the things I've been doing for these past couple of weeks. I took a trip to London which was very exciting because I basically went to to visit some of my all-time favorite paintings and I just thought I'd share some of these moments with you as well as share some of the paintings and drawings I've been working on. Now this portrait I already started a while ago and during this time the weather was so bad. It was constantly super rainy, cold and really cloudy but I always love painting or drawing whenever the weather is bad outside. I just think it's always very cozy. With this painting I really tried to push myself to paint faster and kind of find a balance between harsh and soft edges within the portrait. A lot of great artists I look up to have this sort of beautiful harmony between soft blended edges like when things fall away in the shadows and more defined lines that give this beautiful form to the subject. So that was kind of what I tried to do with this painting as well as keeping that freshness of the first few layers alive as I sometimes feel like the more paint I put on and the more I overwork details the more the magic kind of disappears from the features if that makes sense. I like having those first few transparent layers of burnt umber and burnt sienna peek through as I feel it gives some more texture and life to the painting. So I really try not to overwork details as much and not to waste too much time on small areas. Now this is a little bit random but I also wanted to share this beautiful sticker book I got a while ago. It's called the Wicca sticker book and it has got so many beautiful stickers of paintings, of a lot of pre-raphaelite paintings, of nature and just of subjects related to magic and I just thought these were so beautiful and just perfect for decorating my sketchbook. This year I really want to practice my drawing more and do more anatomy studies and full body paintings as well. I just don't think I draw as much as I think I should and drawing is such a great way to get the creative flow going and helps getting inspired so much. So I really wanted to start with doing these little figure studies with graphite pencil and some light colored chalk. Now the thing is I never paint or draw myself. I think I did a self-portrait once in art school and that was just because of an assignment we had to do. I just think looking at myself and really studying my own face is never really that interesting compared to other people and other faces and I think that's just because I see myself every single day and I prefer studying other people and their expressions and features. But I really want to challenge myself and my skills a lot more this coming year and I want to make larger compositions and practice form life even more and I've never painted the self-portrait from life before so I thought I'd just give it my best try. I set up a mirror in front of me and just started blocking in the main shapes and honestly I think this might be the hardest painting I've ever done just because now I had to pose and stay in the same position while also painting myself and I think that's also why I did not film too much of the process just because I really had to keep my focus while painting. It was also just so hard because I think you know your own face the best so I had so many moments where I felt something was so wrong with my painting just because the position of some features could be slightly off and suddenly it did not feel like I was looking at myself anymore. But it truly was such a great exercise and I really pushed myself with this so I'm very happy I at least tried and completed this self-portrait even though I think I made myself look a bit too serious. Now I think like any person who loves art I have always dreamt of seeing my favorite paintings in real life. I was just so excited for this trip and visiting and really getting to see the paintings I've admired for years up close. When I first got a glimpse of John Everett Millais' Ophelia I just got so excited and just stared and studied all the details for such a long time. Just looking at the insane amount of detail in the dress, the flowers and the leaves and the plants. It was just truly an honor to see everything up close and I kept making small rounds and coming back to look at this painting over and over again. It was just so amazing to see all of these paintings I've been studying for years in real life. This was also the first time I got the privilege to see so many paintings by John Singer Sargent and if you've been here for a while you probably know a bit of my Sargent obsession. His painting of Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth is one of my all-time favorites of him and just being able to look at all of his color choices and beautiful, absolutely beautiful brushwork was just magical. And really every time I see one of his paintings it just feels like stepping into a whole other world and I was just in awe the whole time. When I got back home I just still felt so inspired by everything I saw and really started thinking about my own work. I know I'm very much still in the quote-unquote student phase of painting but I really want to make bigger compositions and really try to tell more stories with my paintings as well. So I thought I'd continue practicing more full-body compositions just as some preparation and practice for bigger paintings in the future. So I completed this little study once I got back home. Thank you so much for being here and following along. I hope you enjoyed watching some of the process and I hope to make more bigger paintings soon and share them with you as well. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time!