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.

This week, we continued delving into color still life. The items were brought in by Prof. Garguilo and placed into still life settings. We actually began this painting on Thursday of week 7 and continued into week 8. W The setups were full of complimentary colors and we were to choose 4-5 items with an interesting composition. We were to concentrate on details and shadows, as well as the interesting interactions of the colors. Here's is pictures of the setup, including the portion I chose to paint. After the first class, everything was blocked or at least drawn in, however, the color of the sheet was off and I had a lot of detail work to do. In the second class, we had more time to work and the result was much better. I was able to see that the sheet actually had a green undertone. I think in the end, I was the only one to catch that and while my green shade was too dark to begin, I was able to tone it down. Again, I am having trouble with shadows and I am begin...

I brought in crazy vegetables today, which made my job more challenging, but I have to admit, more fun as well.  My only problem was defining the green/brow/gray color in the stripes. With help from Prof. Garguilo, we came up with something similar. Still having some perspective issues, but this painting was much better than the last.

Today I was so proud of myself because despite a 14 hour workday yesterday, I thought I had managed to get my homework done. Of course, I was wrong. I was supposed to bring a fruit or vegetable. Ironically, I had been debating whether I had time to go to the farmers market before class. But that thought did not remind me of my homework. Thankfully, we had enough items for today's still life set-ups. We did not have a wide range of color, though, so some colored items were added. This the setup I chose to paint: This exercise proved difficult for most of us in class. Getting the colors mixed properly was an issue. I changed colors a lot. However, we were advised to "draw" with a very thin burnt Siena and then start adding color. Here is the progress. The one thing I did that really seemed to work for the fruit was to blend in a yellow on top of the colors.  However, I was very frustrated with the neutral colors. I apparently do not see them the same as others. I w...

It is hard to believe we are into week six. Today, Prof. Garguilo set up more still life, but this time with one colored piece. That colored piece was set so that it's reflection showed up in a reflective piece. Thus, we had the reflection, the object, and any halo effect from the object to deal with. The still life I chose is below: I chose this still life because of the orange. The range of colors started with a gorgeous bright orange to a bright yellow. I constantly take pictures of flowers and sunsets with these colors because I find them energizing and beautiful.  Of course, the second I looked up and caught a glimpse of a coral vase across the room, I wished I had moved quickly enough to get to that still life. But by the time I saw it, too many had crowded around it. The first thing that I had to do was mix the colors. In particular, I needed to mix black.  We had to get black from a mix of primary colors. In particular, I mixed cadmium yellow medium, alzarian re...

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.