behind the paintings

I just finished a painting class! I took it at a local community college for cheaper prices and an easier "A," which isn't to say I didn't learn anything. We weren't quite as prolific as we might have been at MCAD, since we basically didn't have any homework. Nevertheless, I'm proud of my finished pieces. All the completed paintings (and details) are in a separate post.

The first painting we did was a still life in monochromatic color. I was like, weirdly into it at first, because I drew sooo many still lives this past year, and I was pretty eager to dive right in and...show off a little.

As you can tell, I vastly overestimated my ability.

babieth

I knew I wanted to include the baby in the still life—its head was twisted all the way around, its soulless eyes looked to have cataracts, its limbs and buttcheeks were stained with mysterious brown flakes, and its hair was matted and dirty and wild. It looked like a feral child stuck in a boot. I quickly sketched everything IN PEN, because my teacher told me to use PEN, and I experimented loosely with monochromatic shades of yellow.

I was really, really struggling with the proportions, and since I'd sketched the base in STUPID PEN, it was nearly impossible to cover the lines up. I was still in the mindset of drawing instead of painting. And I was trying too hard.

This was the point where I "finished" the painting for the class critique. No one really seemed to like it, though a few said I had good proportions. Thanks for being nice. I left it unfinished because I hated it so much—I was happy with the cloth and the grapes, and that was about it. The stupid tricycle was giving me anxiety. And the baby? Yeah, it could go fuck itself.

The last week of class was an open week where we could bring in our previous paintings and retouch whatever we hadn't finished. I fiddled around with the background, thickly applying paint in an attempt to cover the pen marks as best I could. I also edited a photo of the still life on my computer to more accurately recreate monochromatic shades of yellow. It took me like five hours to get from the previous stage to this. It's still unfinished, because I got bored with it.

The next painting we were assigned was a landscape, painted in complementary colors. I decided to paint a photo I took of the sunset, because cliches are my lifeblood. (I stuck with blue/orange and purple/yellow.)

This is the photo I painted. As I was playing around with the composition, my teacher walked by and said the photo was beautiful, that it looked like a car commercial.

I decided not to include the car.

I didn't take too many progress photos of this painting, but the lack of shape within the sky and trees helped me relax, and I pushed its abstraction. I also started learning how to properly mix colors.

With color, palettes, then, became very important to me.

The next painting was the most difficult of this class: a portrait. I didn't really want to paint myself, because I don't enjoy staring at mirrors, but I did want to do something that didn't look like it was painted directly from a photograph. I decided to take a few photos of my boyfriend who, though a willing model at first, quickly grew impatient and upset that it was taking me more than 30 seconds to arrange the lighting, arrange his body, and take photographs of him. 

This was also my first time painting faces. Faces are so, so much more difficult than I'd anticipated. Drawing faces is easy. Painting faces is an entirely different battle.

At least I did his hair kinda cool.

literally a potato

I messed up mixing the paints, and instead of painting dark shadows under his brow ridge, I painted a lighter color. He looks like he has vitiligo.

After painting and repainting and painting and repainting the face, I finally got to a point where I actually liked what I had. I used a smaller brush and put thought into the colors I was using. I almost wish I'd left the portrait here, since the colors are so minimal, but it would have clashed with the more "finished" look of the rest of the painting. I do like his soulless demon eyes, though.

I left the painting that evening, deciding to sleep on my progress. I showed it to a friend and to my boyfriend, and they said that it was good, though the lines were harsh. With their advice in mind, I finished the painting the next day.

The final painting I did was completed in about two hours, from 11pm to 1am. I was working on that damn still life all day and forgot to even start the final piece. It turned out OK, though. No progress shots of that one.