me & Oliver

Aloa Jungle!

A special private Coaching review I had with Oliver:
Painting on canvas for the first time ever. Everyone who tried this knows how difficult things can be without proper guidance. Oliver approached me with his idea that he wants to paint some canvas with photos of his family. Of course, painting portraits is hard to learn and needs to build up on so many different knowledge levels.




Oliver brought his first painting he did at home and I knew what I had to tackle and teach him: Understanding to read volumes and transport them to a two-dimensional canvas. We did a lot of drawing and planning to understand the pose of his daughter on the photo he brought. I am not showing you the full painting due the personal rights of his daughter, but I am proud to show you the process and a snippet on how Oliver understood to transport volumes to canvas and paint them accordingly.

Enjoy and happy painting!




This is what Oliver has to say about his coaching experience:

"Hi Folks,

 I want to give also my personal review of my second private Coaching with Roman. The first time I visited one of Roman's work shops was in 2014. At that point I started pivoting from painting armies to create single pieces of art.

When my family grew there came the second pivot and I turned away from small miniatures and started working in bigger frames. In my first private coaching I challenged Roman with the idea of putting a foto of a beautiful vacation spot into a 3D painting.

Then some month ago I decided to try out painting acryl on canvas and have a ton of ideas. But with no practical experience I decided to get help from the best artist I know.

Thank you, Oliver!

My thought process here was, that I know Roman paints canvas and he knows where I am coming from. So there is no one better suited to guide me in the process.

 To make it even more challenging I went for the most difficult task there is: Paint a portrait from a foto picturing a young girl..

Besides catching up we started the coaching with a look on what I have done myself when I tried my first canvas picture. Roman was able to open my eyes by teaching me to think pictures not in surfaces but volumes. 

We did some sketches to train this new knowledge before analysing the picture I brought. I thought it would be a simple picture. Man was I wrong. There is so much going on that we only discovered during the coaching...

The next step was analysing the light and shadow situation of my daughter on some print outs. The results were sketched on the canvas with Text Markers.

Afterwards I created a chaotic background on the canvas. That was a lot of fun and you should definitely try something like this out ;) Just splash some colors on your canvas and stroke and push and do crazy stuff.

Then the hard part, the painting started. At the end of the first day basic colors have been applied on all volumes including the face.

The first half of the second day was spent working on the face. It was a back and forth and just after correcting something you found the next thing that did not really fit.

At some point I started measuring exactly and found out, that the nose is to wide to the left. This was something that I could not correct anymore at that point but the other things become a lot easier using a ruler.

I came in a working flow were I just enjoyed Romans company and sometimes his guidance on smaller mistakes.

Overall I am very satisfied with the result, considering that it was my second try to paint on canvas. And as always, Roman was a great teacher, helping me to understand why I need to do things in a certain way to make progress.

Without him I would not have been able to reach such a good result.

Now I will grow my skills on my planned series of pictures and who knows what my third coaching topic will be.. maybe pottery?

Best regards to you all