This was the second homework assignment for the last class. The idea was to draw a bunch of circles and lines over a landscape and use different styles or techniques inside each shape. I tried a bunch of stuff and didn’t worry too much about the final painting.
This was my inspo pic:
The final in-class assignment was to complete a still life of objects we brought ourselves. I brought peppers.
She was really pushing me to expand colors and contrast, including in the shadows. For example, she said quite definitively “daylight is blue” and led me towards using blue in the green pepper. And she wanted me to use purple (yellow’s complement) for shadows on the yellow one. And finally, she talked me through how to get a deeper orange by adding red, rather than it’s complement (blue) which just makes it muddier.
I feel I am learning new things from this rather demanding artist/teacher. (This wiry little woman is a bit intense, but she knows what she’s talking about!) She ran the “bootcamp” in two levels. I participated at the beginner level, but I feel I now have the confidence to join the second level. I definitely won’t be the best artist in that group, but I’m confident I could keep up.
I got pretty good feedback on my colorful still life, although the drill sergeant didn’t love the white table they were sitting on. She wanted me to have done more with the shadows. (Geez lady, I thought this assignment was about the colorful objects!) She did say that that was an “advanced” concept and that my painting was “very good.”
We then moved on to learning all the different ways you can manipulate watercolor paints to achieve different effects. Everything from rubbing alcohol to wax to salt to Saran Wrap to sandpaper was covered. It was a very long demonstration and the British lady was absolutely driving everyone nuts with her incessant questions and interruptions. I’m shocked that the drill sergeant hasn’t snapped at her yet.
This was our in-class assignment.
There are TWO major homework assignments. I just finished the first one:
She had us create these circles and lines in class and the assignment was to add black ink to certain shapes, and then fill in the rest with mini landscapes and other techniques we learned in class, trying to keep the intensity/values balanced with the pure black.
This took many hours. And I still have another very difficult assignment to do by Tuesday.
The drill sergeant has revealed a distinct bias towards realism. She feels that abstract artists who can’t draw and paint accurately aren’t “real artists.” (She’s OK with abstract art by artists who have proven themselves able to draw and paint realistically.)
Truth be told, I’m enjoying the challenge and it’s keeping my mind off other problems and concerns.
This week our watercolor drill sergeant made us copy a colorful abstract collage. The point was to recreate each color as accurately as possible. It was really hard!
I did OK on the color matching but got disapproval for using “subpar” paper which created all those streaks. (I didn’t want to waste my expensive paper on what was essentially an exercise.)
The homework was to paint a still life comprised of colorful objects, getting the colors as close as possible. Again, hard.
Here’s my homework. I’m pretty happy with it although the yellow is not right. I think I went too light on the yellow because I knew I was going to paint those flowers over it. (It would’ve been too much work to mask out that whole flower area. )
Here’s what I was looking at—a collection of objects from China and Japan that I happened to have in my house.
In other exciting news: I decided to move all my painting and drawing stuff out of the dining room and into an extra bedroom upstairs. So I guess I have a “studio” now.
Cute bedroom with nice light that nobody ever used
This is not ideal, but it’s better than the dining room. That card table I’m painting on was my parents. I think it was made in like 1960. It has some sort of faux leather covering that smells moldy. I need to get rid of the daybed and get a new, larger table.
I’m now embarking on Year 2 of my watercolor “journey” 😉
After two sessions of “loosen up with watercolors,” I signed up for something called “watercolor bootcamp.” I probably should’ve taken this class first, but the description scared me off. It’s a watercolor techniques class with heavy emphasis on color theory, color mixing, etc. We spent a whole three-hour class mixing greys. There is homework. There are in-class critiques of the homework.
The very first homework assignment was to do a monotone (one color) painting of three objects with a clear light source.
I used Payne’s Gray.
For this week, we had to do a “complementary color” painting. So two colors that sit across from each other on a color wheel. (Red/Green; Yellow/Purple; or Blue/Orange)
I used only Rose (Red) and Phthalo Green to paint these hydrangeas.
I didn’t spring for all the expensive professional-grade paints that are on the syllabus. (There’s a syllabus!) I’m using what I have and will buy new stuff as needed. Jury is out on whether I’m going to like this class. It’s a bit intense so far. Bootcamp.
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