TET Art: Three Wise Color Monkeys

TET Art: Three Wise Color Monkeys - Part 3

Under Painting completed.

My Three Wise Color Monkeys painting has progressed this week.

If you want to follow along but this is the first post you've seen, you may like to go back and read Part 1 and Part 2 for the previous stages. It'll give you a good insight into how I create my paintings that you may wish to try yourself.

Stage 2 - Under Painting

After drawing the initial image onto the canvas in red acrylic paint, and using the same color to block in mid tones, I continued on with my under painting.

The under painting consists of the three primary colors filling areas of shadow (blue), mid tones (red), and near highlights that aren't white (yellow).

I work very rough, as you can see from the image above. I've used this same technique for my under painting since about 1995, when I used to work primarily in soft chalk pastels. An acrylic under painting gave my pastels are more 'painterly' look as the brush marks and color would still be visible under the chalk.

When I switched from chalks to working entirely in acrylic I continued starting with this under painting because it still helps to make my work look more 'painterly' by showing through the layers. Also, it helps to get a painting started, and looks like you've progressed quite a bit, really quickly.

Typically this stage is completed in under 30 minutes on a painting this size.

Stage 3 - Base Colors

Background completed and base color
on the monkeys started.

Applying the base colors consists of blocking in the background to how it will look in the completed painting. Then blocking in the base color on the actual subject of the painting.

At this stage I've finished the background and blocked in the color of the blue monkey - as I had blue left over from the background. (See image).

You'll notice that the background is pretty much just a gradient light to darker blue that gives a kind of 'glow' around the monkeys. It's a technique I've used on so many of my paintings because I really don't like painting backgrounds.

My paintings are all about the characters. If I paint any background or scene elements at all it's usually only what's minimally required to support the characters. In this case, the only background element is the tree branch the monkeys are sitting on.

Watch the video below for more detail and to see the artwork being painted at speed.

I'm hoping to have all the base coloring done by this time next week, and maybe I'll even have started working on shading and other details too.

If you'd like to follow this artwork's creation and want to see my work in progress photos sooner, my Instagram account is where you'll see them first. Be sure to stop by there and follow me for the latest images.

Comments

New Cat Art Collaboration: TET's Cats Paintings and OpenArt AI Model Workspace (Photobooth)

TET's Cats AI generated art trained on my own art style. Way back in the early 2000's I started painting stylized cat artworks to illustrate some cat themed poems I'd written, that I exhibited and sold online in an exhibition titled 'Sleeping Cats' in 2004. You can see all these early works in my Flickr Album . Many are also available to buy as prints in my RedBubble Store . Leading on from that I began selling my paintings on ebay where the cat themed works were almost guaranteed to sell over any other subject I painted. As a result I became some what known for my cat art to the point where people would commission me to create images of their own pet cats in my cartoony style. Flash forward a decade (almost two at this point) and I haven't painted any cat themed art in years. To be honest I haven't done any traditional painting at all in years. In the last couple of years AI image generators have really caught my attention. Specifically that they are able t...

The Dukes of Hazard Movie - My Thoughts

The Dukes of Hazard is a movie that I wanted to see when it was released in 2005 but didn't because, well, I just didn't get around to it. Not only that but when I heard Johnny Knoxville and Jessica Simpson were in it my expectations were immediately lowered to "it's probably not going to be what I hoped it could be." Which is why I've never been pro-active about hiring the movie on DVD. Last night I saw it was being shown on free to air TV. I happened to have the time to watch, so I did. To sum up my experience... I didn't get fired up by the movie until I watched the 'bloopers' in the end credits. The Dukes of Hazard signature is the car. The General Lee flying through the air in some flat out impossible jumps. We know they're impossible jumps but they're just so cool you kind of want to believe the General Lee can do them. The point is, in the TV series, you never (or rarely) saw the General Lee not land safely and undamaged. Thus, seei...

TET Artwork Diary: Nansen The Cabin Boy's Cat of the Belgian Sailing Ship, RV Belgica, Trapped in an Antarctica Winter, 1897

Belgica in the ice. 1897. Photo: Adrien de Gerlache Y ou wouldn't ordinarily think of cats and penguins together in the same image but that's what I found myself creating when thinking of an idea for my next painting. I have painted penguins before as part of my Australian Animals series from the early 2000's, and I have a couple of cartoon penguins (that you can see in a very old post, Designing Formal Penguins ) I created for a Yeti skateboard graphic, so, I didn't just randomly think, 'penguins'. Recently I had a revelation about my art, in that I don't simply paint pictures of cats, I paint 'relationships'. Almost all of my paintings of cats feature two or more cats, or a cat with something, such as a butterfly, bird, fish, goat... and why not a penguin? However, I didn't want to just paint some random cat with some random penguin. I wondered if there was ever any real cats in history that may have a reason to meet a penguin? Turns out, on...

Movie Review: Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026) No Spoilers

T his is the first time in quite a while we've seen a live action Spider-Man that is, essentially, a fully formed, grown up superhero, fighting crime on his own terms rather than looking to mentors to guide him. In Spider-Man: Brand New Day it's four years after the events of Spider-Man: No Way Home . No one knows who Peter Parker is but Spider-Man has become a local legend, helping to keep New York free of crime. Personally, Peter is still struggling with not reconnecting with his former friends, whose lives are again put at risk when a new foe crosses his path. If you're a fan of Tom Holland's Spider-Man films, and the MCU in general this film should not only not disappoint, you may even consider it to be one of the best MCU films you've seen in a while. I really enjoyed all the quick cameos by small time Spider-Man villains even though I don't know many of them. Their inclusion really started to broaden the scope of the character, despite this installment ...

Boom Crash Opera Born Classic But Not Again

Boom Crash Opera are an Australian Band that reached the peak of their popularity in the mid to late nineteen eighties. They are a band that I knew about at that time but was never really excited by until they released their ill fated double album Born and Born Again in 1995 (Album cover pictured). At the time of its release I was very much into emerging Australian musical acts and was also looking out for new sounds that were different and had kind of a futuristic/electronic sound. Artists that I was buying at the time included; Swoop , Nine Inch Nails and Pop Will Eat Its Self . As well as a really interesting release by David Bowie, the concept album, Outside . Born was a fairly radical departure for Boom Crash Opera (BCO). The first single, Gimme , was often compared to the sounds of Gary Glitter, particularly his single, Rock n Roll part 2 , because of the pounding drum loops. Watch the video below. My favorite single from the album is dissemble which probably went now...

Review: ArtHelper - The All-In-One AI Writing + Marketing Assistant for Artists - 'ChatGPT for Artists'

ArtHelper prides itself on being all 'human-made' art. T he idea of an AI, trained specifically on art business marketing, that can not only offer advice on marketing your work, but also assist with creating all the content too, is certainly appealing. Especially to those of us who would rather spend more time creating our art than trying to sell it. ArtHelper does just that whilst attempting to be your 'home' on the internet. A destination for your profile and portfolio, a marketplace for your art, and a directory of artists as well, with one distinction - all the art must be human made. Which, for you AI artists, doesn't count the prompt for AI generated art - because the idea, according to ArtHelper's creators, isn't the art. Which is a fair point, in terms of promoting art 'made by a human', but can get kind of murky when you understand that not all AI art is generated from a single prompt... and 'found object art' isn't actually ...

Embarrassing Yourself with Doof Doof Music

Ever since Spinal Tap popularized the notion of turning an amp up to eleven audio systems have been rising to the challenge of louder, more awesome sound. In particular, car audio systems have embraced the notion of the bigger the noise the better the sound must surely be. What I'd like to know is, if these sound systems are so good, why do they make all music sound the same... Doof, Doof, Doof? You've all heard them. Pimped up cars, with audio systems seemingly worth more than gold, volume blasting way past eleven. Sound waves booming long before you make a positive visual on the car... Doof, Doof, Doof. It has to be the audio system right? Surely all these people can't be playing the same tune? Doof, Doof, Doof. Could it be that the more money spent on a car sound system the less musical range it will actually play? Maybe these people can't afford to buy music after purchasing the audio system so they all play the same demo track? Doof, doof, doof. In my own car I hav...

TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Search This Blog