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.