Visual Art Gifts

The mushrooms painting done in acrylic is one of my favorite paintings. It took several hours to do just like it would have taken me if it were a photo manipulation.

Mushrooms Painting by Christopher Johnson

I was trying to make a realistic painting with very recognizable mushrooms however I didn’t want it to be as complicated as real life would make it so I simplified the background and I only painted a few mushrooms. I gave them brown-tan-white tops and white stems. The ground was simplified to a dark brown instead of the normal leaf and twig littler you’d probably expect to find in that setting.

The trees in the background are simplified down to brown lines for branches and short wide strokes for leaves.

Moonrise on a distant plant is my second robot artwork (the first was a digital drawing), and I used acrylic paint.  It wasn’t part of the Learn and Master Painting course that I’ve been learning to paint with, but I did try to practice different strokes, brush technique, and color mixing as shown in the course.

Moonrise on a Distant Planet Painting by Christopher Johnson

Unlike my previous works, I decided to first make a quick sketch outline of the robot basic shape and then I started painting over it in blocks finishing with the sky and moonrise. No, I didn’t really try to keep inside the lines since the painting course doesn’t show that as being correct. Instead I used my outline sketch as a guide and quite a few details changed as I worked.  It was loosely inspired by a famous robot, but almost every aspect of this work is different from the robot that inspired it.