Saturday, December 19, 2015
Summer and Fall Production
Here's the rest of the production from the summer and fall: two more landscapes and an attempt at an oil-painting portrait.
I can look at the first -- An Unnamed Tributary of Ben's Run -- and recall standing in the swamp with bugs and heat for a month of Saturday mornings. I struggled with constantly changing shadows as the sun moved higher in the sky. Eventually, I took a reference photo so I could preserve a moment in time and stop chasing shadows.
Nature is dynamic! When I started the painting below, everything was green. When I ended it, all the leaves were gone. Between start and finish, I was able to capture some color. Sky and shadows look different every time you go out. So, I realize that I'm capturing a composite scene. The sky only looked this way once and when it did the rest of the scene looked different!
Finally, I wanted to try my hand at an oil-painting portrait. I only had one (reluctant) human model. So, I used a blurry photo from my daughter's wedding last year for most of this. I was able to plead with my model to pose for almost three hours (not all at once)! Woo Whoo!
Here's how it turned out. I told her that she'd love it in ten years.
Saturday, July 18, 2015
A Portrait and A Landscape
It's been a while since the last term finished in May, but I thought I'd post my final homework. It's a portrait of my granddaughter done from a photo. Marcia had it framed and it's hanging in a place of honor in our hallway -- not because it's great art, but because it's our granddaughter for crying out loud! The medium is pastel.
Since class ended, I spent about a month being handyman around the house -- repairing, spackling and painting. I planned to take a two-week intensive landscape painting course in June but it wasn't offered. So, I decided to use the leave I would have used to take off summer Fridays and practice landscaping painting (and, in a small way, practice retirement which may actually happen some day).
The result was that I went from painting the house to painting the house. Well, from painting the house to a painting of the house. In the composition was trying to capture the interesting angles and tall trees. Here it is. I think I'm done.
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Portrait Drawing
I'm taking a break from oil-painting classes and slogging my way through a portrait drawing class. I've learned a few things like:
- Portrait drawing is hard. We're so good at facial recognition that a line or feature only has to be a little off to look a lot off. And by little I mean a millimeter or two.
- It's a lot easier to draw from a photograph than it is to draw from real life. It's hard to get someone to sit still for five to ten hours while you measure, sketch ... draw, correct; draw, correct, draw; draw, correct...forever.
Three more classes and I'm done. And, although I'm ready for a break (it's not easy finding ten to twelve hours in a week to do this when you're working fulltime), I think I've learned a little something that will help my drawing gong forward.
Now, if I could just take care of that having to work nuisance.
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