Gnome Studies 2

 Oh, hello! Welcome Back! How about I share some more "gnome studies" with you? OK! As I stated in the previous post, I began these studies as practice and preparation for the upcoming alumni group exhibit at Carson-Newman.  Early on, I knew I needed to at least attempt to determine what type of representation of gnomes I wanted to paint.  How "realistic" or "representational" did I want them to be? How cartoony, stylized, or simplified should they be?

In order to decide, I just began to explore different approaches. I guess I still haven't settled on one standard way to paint the little folks, but I usually just settle on what feels right in the situation. What feels right is usually some mixture of all of the above! haha I forgot to take a photo of the pencils for jolly gnome above, but here he is in his final painted form.

After getting the jolly gnome painted, I moved on to paint some of the other gnomes I had drawn. You can see that the little girl gnome understood whatever joke was told, while the green capped fellow doesn't quite get it. Here's a closer look:

And here they all are together on the "gnome studies" page (which is a page of Strathmore coldpress 12"x9" watercolor paper by the way.)

These two chaps are a perfect example of how I used these studies to learn from the great work of other artists. Its pretty easy to see that they were heavily influenced by the work of the talented, Jean-Baptiste Monge when you look at his sketches here and here (top right.) I found that referring to the works of others (as well as photos and my own sketches) during these "gnome studies" to be a very helpful and informative part of the "learning to paint gnomes" process. It's good starting place, but not the destination, of course! I could then do my own paintings of the gnomes a little easier. As always, one of the best ways to learn is by doing.

And speaking of sketches, gnomes, and learning from the work of the masters, here are some sketches I did studying the work of Rien Poortvliet from his book, Gnomes.

I hope you enjoyed looking at more gnomes. There are certainly more to come! And if you want to see some of my gnome paintings in person, don't forget to check out the exhibit in October! Thanks for looking! God bless!