Friday, November 18, 2011

Diving In

The time has come to begin the final project for my Painting I studio class. This painting is free-subject, but must reflect everything we've learned. Since I'm sick of still life and don't want to do another portrait, I'm going the surrealist route with it.


The starting sketch is rather confusing, but the idea is that of a woman in white dress that is draped over buildings in such a way that they are quite pronounced. She looks to the heavens, arms outstretched, with the night sky behind her. I didn't realize when the idea first struck, but it does have a lot of undertones of my Christian faith. And that's just fine.

The surrealist nature, however, does not mean that I get to make it all up. This piece still needs believable elements, so a still life does, in fact have to be used, as seen below:

The fabric isn't the right color, but it is the right heaviness. One of our lessons was that color is arbitrary however, so painting it as while should work out just fine.

This is it as of today. The "blue" of the dress will be white eventually, but the trick with oils is to start dark and work up to the brighter and lighter tones. A fellow art major has been giving me a lot of feedback and several ideas, all of which I think can take this idea from "neat" to "amazing". Also, the buildings will be exaggerated so they have more definition.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Finishing and Re-Visiting


While the self-portrait is finished, the photo quality leaves something to be desired. The outcome of the actual painting, however, is satisfactory. Or, dare I even say, something to be proud of. The instructor and class were very fond of it during critique. It isn't perfect, but it's much better than before.

Also, since I had my paints out early this week, I went back to this painting and covered over the obnoxious lemon in the front that was disrupting the desired vocal point. It's much better now and still my favorite of the paintings done this semester.

The next painting is our choice as long as we demonstrate what we've learned over the semester. I have a concept, but it wouldn't translate to words very well. Hopefully a sketch will be ready to show soon.

Sunday, November 13, 2011

The Evolution of a Painting


This was the first time in several years where I reached a point at which a piece of my art made me want to cry every time I looked at it. What you see above is where my confidence began to detirorate. More was done, further efforts were made, but I hated it even more. At last I covered what I'd done of my face in white and flipped it on its side to start anew.

The lighting in this photo is awful, but the paint was still wet so the flash just caused a glare. Also, since there were no pupils yet, the entire thing is a bit creepy to look at.


This photo was taken a couple of hours ago. Obviously it's not finished yet, though a lot of progress has been made since this shot. My glasses will be added, but not until last, as per my teacher's suggestion.

While working on this I noticed that my brother and I have very similar mouths. And while yes, the mouth is too small, it's an error I'm going to live with. I feel tat fixing it at this point would ruin the whole thing.

Stay tuned for the finished product, which should be up in the next few days.