Betsy's Art Journey

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.

To prepare us to move into color painting, we were instructed to create value scales for red, green and blue. Each value scale contained 11 1.375" squares. We were instructed to put each scale about 1/2" from each other.  I guess I should have guessed that we would be using the rest of the canvas for our next in-laws project. I began by mixing my three middle tones. To do this scale, we had to use complimentary colors for the dark values. Since we had to create red and green for two of the scales, it just made sense to begin there. I started with the green scale. Each step required adding more and more red to get the next darker shade. At the end, in order to get black, I did have to add additional blue (a component of green).  To finish the scale, I returned to the original green and used white to make lighter values. I repeated the process with the red, mixing green to get the darker reds and adding white to lighten the values. This is as far as I managed to finish i...

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.