Still Life

Taking an online class through The Academy of Art in San Francisco in composition in painting, which so far has been fantastic. Very traditional, learning tons of information that I'm going to be able to bring to my students. Quite wild to take a class online...have to be self motivated to put in the work, there's no actual class so you have to figure out the time to do it...it's really up to you to make it successful, get as much or as little out of it as you can.

This was from the first assignment, to do a "pattern painting" from ambient light. It's not about contour lines, but more about the shapes that the colors make...more complicated then that, but that's the short explanation. Since I don't paint all that often, I have to "relearn" it as I do it, and it really is a pleasure seeing how it takes shape. That's whats so amazing about painting- one day a piece you make can be a masterpiece, another day a piece can be crap, you never really know what to expect. Plus it takes TIME, not like photography which is instant gratification- it takes TIME to draw, to paint, to get the proportions correctly and angles right and shading not too much or too little...but at the same time it's so gratifying when you get it right!

Finished Painting

Here it is-
Integrated the photo transfer more into the painting, so it's not so "here it is, a photo transfer, stuck on the painting!"
Added pencil marks into the photo transfer, covered part of the other photo transfer with paint, added darker values onto the drawing as well as deep blue colored pencil. I'm pretty happy with it and excited to do more pieces with the same theme.

Skeleton Painting/ transfer

I saw this illustration of a skeleton in an old National Geographic, and knew I had to use it in an artwork. I used matt medium on the image side of the magazine and a piece of watercolor paper, used a brayer to evenly distribute the matt medium and waited for it to dry. I then used a damp paper towel to get the back of the magazine page peeled off and show the reversed image.

The skeleton drawing section is from life from the one in class- by the way, I'm so glad I got one for the art room! It's one of my favorite art supplies I purchased for my art classes! I used HB, 2B and 4B pencils and a tortillion to get the values.

The background is in acrylic, using burnt umber, titanium white, burnt sienna, yellow ochre and hooker's green. I first did a layer of flat paint to match the magazine background color. I then, while still wet, added darker accents of burnt sienna and burnt umber and mixed it. To add some visual interest, I added some hints of cadmium red. I also had experimented with painting on top of masking tape and removing it, to add some three dimensional quality to the artwork.

I think I may continue to work on this, integrating more of the drawing with the magazine.