Betsy's Art Journey

We started the day by critiquing our homework. It didn't even occur to me to put a table under my items.  Something I need to remember as we move on. As we did last week, we continued with monochromatic quick paintings. However, rather than using our Ivory black, we were instructed to get out our Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber. Turns out you can make fabulous bleach with these two colors. And not only that, you can tweak them to be warm or cold by adding more of one or the other.  That makes it easier to bring the focus forward or back (cold recedes, warm comes forward).  In the first painting, we had 2 items. We were instructed to paint quickly, but try to pay attention to negative space. I didn't quite manage to finish in the allotted time, however, it still is not bad. After then taking a break, Prof. Garguilo added a third item to the still life and we began again. This painting went more smoothly and I believe part of the reason is because I focused in...

As we started last Thursday, we were to gesso a canvas and then partition into quadrants. We were to find two contrasting items to paint in monochrome paintings, using 30 minutes for each painting. I had a hard time selecting my items, but finally decided on a white ramekin and a thermos.  I think the three paintings do show improvement, with the last being the best, but this is tough work in such a short period of time.

On Monday, instead of painting, we watched a documentary about Spanish painter, Antonio Lopez Garcia, and his quest to paint a quince tree he had planted in his yard. The documentary showed all the preparations and measurements he had to do as he started and continued painting. Because of weather, the painting had to be stopped unfinished, however, he continued working, changing to graphite. It clearly showed the amount of work necessary to make a masterpiece. On Thirsday, we were instructed to take a blank canvas and break it into quadrants. Prof. Garguilo then set up a still life for each of us containing 2 contrasting objects. We were instructed to quickly (30 minutes) paint the still life in one quadrant. Then he reset the objects to a different configuration. We then had 1/2 hour to paint again. The result, especially in my case, is that we became more observant.

We had too much homework this weekend, and while I worked on it, I was only able to get some of each piece done in between grading. The first assignment was to do 2 drawings of still life at home. I managed one, which probably had too much in it, but I like how it turned out. Second assignment was to start mixing colors to make matches to items we find. The hard part of this will be finding samples as he has limited us to 3 of any one kind of sample, for a total of 20. My start is nail polish. The top is my colors and the bottom the nail polish. I may have to to-do 2 of these now that they are dry. The third assignment was to gesso a page in our sketchbook and draw two different angles of our little white cubes. From there, we are to use monochromatic scale from a primary color to paint the values. I managed to do things backward. I drew my cube before I gessoed, so will have to re-read the cubes before I can paint. I am not afraid to say that this is a LOT of homework ...

Today, we explored monochromatic painting again, but this time with a twist: we had to choose red or black and use a range of values from white to black. To accommodate a wider range of values, Prof. Garguilo provided some different items that were charcoal and/or flat gray, as well as some new, interesting shapes.  I tried to see about changing still life, but the other two setups had too many working at them and I couldn't get a good angle to get shadows. So, this will look similar to the still life I have been working on for the black monochromatic paintings. First, here is the arrangement: In case you can't tell, the upright piece on the right is a clock weight and it drove me crazy today. At the first break, I had much of the blocking done. And I had the front block pretty well finished. The pot, however was getting muddy, so I needed to walk away for a bit. I also realized the background and shadows needed work, so, I spent time going between the various s...

The homework posts are backward because I had to go to training when this one was assigned. However, I finally got to complete this. This was more still life/monochromatic practice. And now that I am taking a picture, I see that I need to repair it a bit. I have this beautiful blue glass vase that is interesting because of variations in thickness of the glass. I have tried to draw this vase to no avail, so I thought I would use it for this homework. Problem is, I couldn't decide what else to put on the picture. It happened that my Murphy's Oil Soap bottle was nearby, so I thought it was an interesting contrast. This is what resulted. As you can probably see, the vase has a "hunchback" problem on the right. I will have to fix that before turning this in.  After some repairs, this is the result was this. There is still an issue with coverage. Close up, you can still see canvas through the paint. This is something I am working on.

This week, we further explored still life with monochromatic painting. Prof. Garguilo created 3 setups around the room. These contained boxes and balls plus black and reflective items. The three displays follow: The goal of this exercise was to recreate the still life paying close attention to values, including the values in the reflections. We were given two class periods to complete out paintings. I chose the first still life because I liked the challenge of the reflection.in the coffee pot. The stark contrast of the black and white items also intrigued me. After the first class session, I had a good representation of the still life, however my perspective was slightly skewed on all of the items. As we started class on Wednesday, I knew I had to get the perspectives fixed on each item, plus work on the values in the blocks and ball.  The black brick was the easiest item to fix. I had spent quite a bit of time studying my photograph and realized that not only was...

Today we were asked to created a still life using different colored fabrics and one white, one gray , and one black item. Then, we were to work on painting those items using the value scale we created for homework. The hardest part of this assignment was finding the three requisite items. Somehow, we ran out of black items, so we ended up with a strange three-day pipe. Three of us worked together to drape the fabrics and arrange the three items into an interest still life. I am a bit relieved because they will be continuing to work on these paintings on Thursday when I have to miss class. I made some pretty great progress, so I don't feel like I will fall behind too much.

Our homework this week was to create a value scale from titanium white to ivory black. In the space we taped off on our canvas last week, we were to set up a row of seven 2-inch boxes. We were to start with our medium gray and then create even values between that medium gray and the black and white on either end. I have to admit, while tricky, it was much easier than creating a value scale of India ink and water in 1-inch squares during the drawing class. Two more rules: tape and even strokes. I think I did a pretty good job meeting these two rules, although it was a bit messy with the tape.

Today, we delved into the world of monochromatic painting. We reset out still-life's from last class at the beginning of class. Then we spent some time working on mixing paint. The goal was to create three different values of gray by mixing black and titanium white. After we had successfully created these values, Prof. Garguilo explained that we would recreate out still life using a dark gray and a light gray. He asked us to work doing blocking of large areas, ignoring details. This weekend, we have an assignment to create a value scale from black to white.