Page Six and A Finished Painting

Wherein Rose carries out on her warning and I call it (temporary?) quits on the "Surreal" painting. The highlighting on the fabric is still ugly, but the rest looks better enough for me to be satisfied until I get bored later and fix it.

I Can Fix It!

"Wreck-It Ralph" is a great movie by the way. Just thought should be put out there.

Today most of Intermediate Painting was spent making more adjustments to old pieces. A great deal of time also went into my current piece, but again it's going to be a gift so won't be shown here until after Christmas. Instead let's take a look at what I worked on today, and compare them to photos of how they looked before.

First, the "surrealist" painting that I was so disappointed in. Here's how it used to look:

Here's how it looks now. It still isn't finished, but it's a large improvement. The chairs still need work, and several more details will be added to the cheese house and the wine glass as well as its contents. The drapery will also be changed.

 Here's the last assignment I did, in all it's frustrating "glory"...

 ...and here's how it looks now sitting in my locker in the studio. I decided to cover the bricks, but not with paint so thick that you can't see some hint of them. It simply isn't possible with my skill level and the remaining time to fix all those bricks and make them presentable. Something needs to be added along be bottom to make the wall more tidy, and the flowers will be made neater and have more details. It's much easier for me to look at just because the bricks are covered.

Week Thirty Will Be Fixed Later

Lo and behold the fruit of my labors. I was actually very frustrated with this towards the end and intend to still alter it between now and finals week, but here it is for now. I also finished the digital drawing of a characters comparison. I decided not to color it since it was taking forever already.

Week Thirty Rebels

Not much to say right now other than I have a long way to go and until 9:30 AM tomorrow to do it!

Week Thirty One Takes on More

Not much to say about the painting other than that it's coming along nicely. Painting holes into Swiss cheese is more difficult than expected, but so help me, I will make it work.

Also, despite my brain telling me that it's a terrible idea, I'm working on a digital drawing of a comparison between how I depict two certain "versions" of one Hetalia character. I think explaining would bore most of my readers, so just have a look at the short skinny guy next to the strong muscular one.

Week Thirty Jumps Forward

Today's update will actually have three progressive images, since a lot was accomplished during class today, and each step of progress had its own point of interest. Okay, that and I wanted evidence of when it looked nice in case I royally screw up.

As it is right now, some adjustments need to be made to the table and chairs that hopefully aren't too obvious in the sky. I was considering adding detail to the buildings, but they have a nice, eerie presence as just shadows, so they're going to stay that way. Thankfully the ones towards the middle will be covered by the foreground.

Week Thirty One Is Going to Get Crazy

As I may have mentioned, the next painting assignment is surrealism. For years I've had the idea of a wine glass with a night sky in it, but that's just a start for a painting. So I spent the first hour of class today looking for inspiration online and brought together what you see up there. The dripping substance will hopefully resemble wine and have some sort of imagery in it. The lamp hanging off the left of the cheese-house won't be used.

Since I spent so much time conceptualizing, there isn't much to see as far as the painting except the blues of the sky that will be between the city and the dripping wine. Looks neat anyhow.

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.