Saving the best for last, Painting - I'm so glad I took this class. It was definitely frustrating at times, like seeing how good others were or how fast they could paint when it seemed like I took ten times as long, or when you were stuck doing an annoying assignment, or when no matter what you did you couldn't seem to make what you were painting something you liked, or when the teacher doesn't seem to ever like your work but at the end raves about how great it's been the whole time, or when buying all the supplies and seeing just how huge of a canvas was required and wondering how will I ever fill that thing?! ... but, it was worth it, I'm really glad I took it. I had a lot of friends in the class and I was back to just art, something I'd missed for a long time, and I've finally dappled in oil painting!
So, here's the work for it. We actually started in monochromatic (ie all the values (lights and darks) of one color) acryllics and did a few practice paintings to become familiar with painting basics and canvases and such. One of my still life pieces, I spent a lot of extra time over the weekend on and it actually turned out really nice.
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| the inspiration - the assignment was to bring an assortment of random things to create a unique still life to teach us about positive and negative space and about creating values in one color from multi-colored objects. |
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| Free Time, 16"x20" - I choose things that exemplified me, some of my favorite things or things I'd do in my free time, and mostly, objects I thought would be a lot of fun to paint. My teacher really liked this painting and raved about the detail work on the cards (she actually at first thought I'd just glued cards to my painting ... um, I can take credit for good work, but it's not that good). And yes, I really did only use a tube of dark brown and a tube of white paint, but I discovered while painting that I could either lighten the brown with white paint to get the cooler blue-ish tones, or I could lighten the brown with just water to get the warmer orange-y tones. So, I used it to my advantage, and since the background (anyone else recognize it?) is originally much more orange than my objects, I only used the water lightening technique on the background, and only the white lightening technique on the foreground. Cool, huh? |
After acryllics, we moved straight into color by moving to oil paints. No practice pieces here, she just had us dive right in. (looking back, I wish I would've had the motivation to do my own small practice piece, just to get used to how oils blend and colors and such, so I wouldn't have had to make my main pieces into learning experiences... oh well. I guess it still turned out ok). Our first assignment: full chroma colors, aka bright color intensity, as bright as we could. (and I'll admit, I'm no good at high chroma assignments, because they tend to be very unrealistic, and I can't seem to let myself stray from what I see). We didn't have to do a still life, but that's what I'm most comfortable and best at doing, so I brought in my own. ... my teacher commented that it was the first still life someone had brought in years... great...? I guess.
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| the inspiration - funny how often I seem to draw food... my entire high school concentration in AP drawing was food... hmm. I guess I just always liked the idea of a painting of fruit on the wall of my kitchen or dining room. |
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| Bowl of Fruit, 24"x30", rendition #1 - this is how it came out halfway through... I liked the fruit a lot, considering it was my first attempt at oil painting, and I knew I wanted blue in the background, but I think I went a bit over board with the blue... so... |
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| rendition #2 - attempts to tone back on the blue... It helped some, I think, but then I made the mistake of listening to my teacher and making changes from her suggestions of adding green to the blue on the bottom to make it more impressionist-like and high chroma, but I really don't do that well and it just didn't work for me, plus the tan background attempt blends in waaaay too much with the banana for my liking ... plus, after turning it in, some maintenance workers that weekend were cleaning the floor or something and splashed brown goo all over it. So, I'm going to have to fix it anyway, I think I'll change the background again, try for a more white instead of tan, and fix the shadows (as now I realize they are going all different directions), etc. ... a work in progress. |
Our next assignment done at the same time as this one, and supposed to parallel it, I guess, was all low-chroma pictures... but not just using colors with low chroma, they also had to be compliments, aka only two colors across the color wheel from each other. ... not esp. easy to pull off. ... I learned a lot about color mixing and blending and technique in this painting, but for as much time and trouble as it took, I really abhor the actual end result. but I guess it's meant to be a learning experience, right?
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| Florence Cathedral, 24"x30" ... it's supposed to be the front of the cathedral, inspired by a photo I had ... nothing like I'd hoped it'd turn out. and unfortunately my blue-orange complimentary color scheme somehow evolved into a teal-salmony pink color scheme. *sigh* oh well. |
Our third oil painting assignment was another low-chroma piece, and, if you hadn't done a person yet, had to have a figure or face in it. -_- great. I'm not very good at people, much better at inanimate objects. But, you gotta do what you gotta do. So, I came up with an idea and snapped a picture of myself for reference. I turned out... okay. I don't hate the painting, but I really don't know what I'm going to do with it. While I liked the colors I mixed to create it, it really doesn't match any of my decor at all. hmm... dilemmas of creating art, I suppose... what to do with it once you're done.
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| the inspiration - I wanted to do something casual and relaxed, something that really was me... so why not me reading? It's generally what I filled a lot of my free time with (until I met Danny, lol) and it just lent itself to a calm serene piece, especially when I decided to attempt adding lighting and playing with an open window as the light source for the piece. Overall, I think I did pretty good with it... I'm still too cautious of a painter to really fully understand lighting in paintings like the Dutch renaisannce painters could (like Johannes Vermeer), but it was fun to try a bit. |
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| A Girl Reading, 24"x30" - this was taken with a flash so the colors are a bit off but it's more in focus... |
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| ... this photo is more true to the actual colors, but it's really fuzzy because I didn't have a tripod with me... wish I was better at photography to be able to show off my artwork more acurately. |
Our last piece was completely open. Only requirements - add to be complex, done in oils, and 30"x40" or larger ... !!! Yeah, so, I was *definitely* freaking out at that. I'm the type of artist who likes to keep things small, like 5"x7", or smaller, lol. But, with a lot of effort and lots of extra time on the weekends, and the help of all the previous large paintings, I was able to pull it off. While trying to come up with an idea for a painting that large, I decided I'd add my own requirement - something I'd actually want to hang up, haha. After that, I got my idea and went to work.
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| Texas Bluebonnets, 30"x40" - I knew I'd love to try a landscape, and some of my most favorite pieces that I've actually hung up have clouds in them. Plus, I love all the beautiful wildflowers of Texas - to all the disbelievers, it really can be pretty here! I added the barn and windmill because it just felt like true rural Texas, and I've always liked watching windmills (esp. the one near our house that used to put Christmas lights on it every year). And last I added Danny and me sitting in his truck, reminiscent of one of our first dates where we went to the country and just watched the stars (yeah, pretty cheesy and cliche, I know, but whatever, it was fun, lol). Overall, there's still a lot that frustrates me about the painting but I generally like it and don't mind it hanging up in my living room. (I'm not sure if the photo really does it justice, it kinda skewed the colors a bit, but this was the best take ... the grass is greener and the truck isn't quite so bright... Danny jokes that I made his truck look too new and beefed up, haha). |
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