the only two successful paintings I made in my portraiture class

alas

And here's a bonus WIP shot that got a bunch of notes because MCAD reblogged it:

a portrait i did on reddit

because i am the procrastination kween

two portraits

If the Angel Moroni held a gun to my head and told me to paint a decent portrait in oil lest the golden plates be forever hidden away in the ground, I would take the gun from his hands and do the deed myself. Because I can't. Paint. Oil. Portraits. I don't think I can paint ANYTHING in oil, actually. 

Anyway. I've been feeling quite dejected about this and wondered if perhaps I was just shit at portraits in general. But I was determined to prove myself wrong. So here are two random portrait doodles of classmates that I did on a tablet:

Not terrible, right?? Goddammit. I need to learn how to use oil paint properly because I SUCK right now.

orange + pink figures (and awful portraiture)

The figure drawing co-op finally started this year. I went on Sunday for like....three hours. But we only had the model for two—he was an hour late. And his poses were very strange so I left early.

There was an older white man sitting next to me and his work was so fucking good. I think that I will know I have "made it" in terms of art when I look at something I've created and think to myself, "Yup, that sure looks like a painter grandfather made that." But a girl can only dream.

Since he was late I took some time to draw some strangers. I think the woman above noticed I was drawing her, and she sort of furtively smiled at me throughout the rest of the class. I was a little uncomfortable.

30 seconds

This was the only gesture drawing I did that I liked. His hand is all fucked up, but I like how I simplified the rest of the form. Also, yes, those are testicles.

1 min.

This was the first figure I did that day that I actually liked. I quite like how I rendered his butt.

5 min.

10 min.

It's strange—when figure drawing, I am usually most excited by drawing cloth, or other objects that give context to the model. I don't know. And they always end up nice, even when the figure looks completely wrong. Anyway, I'm pretty proud of how this one turned out, though I regret adding in those black lines :-(

10 min.

10 or 15 min?

I'll go again next week. Markers are so fun, but I'm not too sure how to draw the figure nicely without creating a mess of scribbles underneath. It's hard to slow down, and my initial series of gestures often look like potato after potato after sprouting, moldy potato. I think next time I'll just go straight to the markers and forget about the lines—I seem to be more of a painter than a drawer, anyway.

Paintings

Portrait of the Artist's Boyfriend Reading Virginia Woolf, acrylic on canvas, 2015

A Walk Through Minnehaha, acrylic on canvas, 2015

Sunset Above the Kowalski's Parking Lot, acrylic on canvas, 2015

Yellow Still Life With Baby, acrylic canvas, 2015

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

Learning to Love You More x2

So, in one of my classes, we were tasked to film a 3-minute documentary (without music) that followed one of the prompts on the Learning to Love You More website.

I was struggling to get this completed on time, since I was literally in Colorado over Spring Break, so I decided, at the last minute, to film a sort of experimental documentary based on prompt 43: "MAke an exhibition of the art in your parent's house." The first iteration, set to the tune of "Sometimes You Gotta Make It Alone" by Money Mark, can be found here and not embedded at low res.

Unfortunately, I fucked up. This was only a minute and a half long, and it was set completely to the tune of music. It was essentially a music video. My teacher, kind as she is, allowed me to make another, which I think actually turned out better than the first (even though I tried way less hard on this one than the first one). This was based on prompt 33: Braid someone's hair.


Living Space from Marcie LaCerte on Vimeo.

It was pretty hard to color correct since it was all filmed indoors at night at a high ISO, and everything turned out kind of too pink, but whatever. I almost like how unrealistic and soft and pink it is. I tried somewhat hard with the cinematography, sort of, kind of, though I was told that it looks mostly like a "home video," so I guess I failed in that respect.

I really enjoyed the editing process of trying to create an intimate documentary portrait of someone, and I'm doing something like this for my final project for the class. So stay tuned for THAT, because that's gonna be fun.