How I put New Life into an Old (really bad) Painting

An enlarged portion of the new painting

My artwork tends to be diverse. It goes from
drawing figures and flowers in colored pencil and ink abstract drawings to
oil portraits. My current art project is another nude in acrylic. This time of a male figure. I feel the human body is one of the most difficult subjects to paint but also the most beautiful. I guess its a matter of opinion whether I can it paint well or not. 

At any rate, I had the urge to paint. I checked on the price of a new canvas but it really wasn’t in my budget for the week, so I decided to make do with what I had. I rummaged around and found an old still-life painting that I did about two years ago…that was really bad. It was some fruit and a Chianti bottle sitting on a table. It looked like everything was about to slide off the table! 

My expertise in painting the perspective was not there, that's for sure.  

Used some light sandpaper

So I decided to paint over it and start again.  I used a payne’s gray and ivory black to cover it but it was too dark for the skin tone. In addition, it was quite bumpy in spots.  I took a little sandpaper and scraped off al the old paint and bumps within the figure. It left an interesting pattern where the black paint was scraped away. 

You can see where the table was!

I'm thinking this will add an interesting quality to the painting when it is finished. I will post the finished painting when I am done.  Usually a painting takes me about two weeks if I am really motivated. (years if Im not!)

I would love to hear from you! Let me know about an art and crafts projects you are working on. For both paintings I used "Art Models 3. Live Nude Photos for the Visual Arts." by Maureen and Douglas Johnson. 

Here is first painting I finished in 2011. It is also in acrylic.

A little "censuring" was added of course