One More Homework Painting

I did this one yesterday. The lower right corner looks off to me or maybe it's just lost in the shadow. It was fun painting the browns for this, especially the chocolate brown for the liquid and the orange/brown for the mug.

#209 - Handleless Mug - 5" x 5" - hardboard

16 Minutes

Today, the rules were unlimited drawing time, 16 minutes of active painting time, picture taking, 2-3 minutes of revisions, and lastly, picture taking, again.

Here is the result at 16 minutes.

Here is the final version.

#208 - Sturdy Mug - 6" x 6" - hardboard

The process felt less frantic, partly from adjusting to a faster pace and partly from giving myself unlimited drawing time.

20 Minutes

The stress was completely self-induced. On Monday, I tried another 20 minutes painting as part of this week's homework. This time I followed "the rules" more closely. That means I did the drawing and painting in 20 minutes. I did not pick easy subject matter for me. My subject contained several  pesky ellipses. As a result, I spent a lot of time drawing, which cause me to feel all clenched up when it came to painting. I had trouble with values, color mixing, and all the rest. Again, the stress was completely self-induced. An apple on a plate would have been a better choice.

After 20 minutes, I was at this point.

I continued to fiddle after the 20 minutes and ended up here. The plate is till wonky, but the cup shape is a bit better.

#207 - Cup & Saucer - 6" x 6" - hardboard

I did this as a timed painting and may continue to do so, since I've been battling a bad case of overworking-itis. With Sunday's timed pepper painting, it felt like a tiny step away from that. To get the benefits I want, I think I will give myself unlimited drawing time and just time the painting part.

Homework Paintings Brought To You By One Yellow Pepper

Prior to starting another round of painting classes, I have been painting from photos only. While I still don’t get composition, I think I've gotten better at cropping photos for painting purposes. In the world of still life, composition completely eludes me, so I am experimenting and not worrying about it. It does remind me that there are people who approach the world in a visual way that I do not. I think this is partly intrinsic, but I also think that certain jobs and hobbies can help. While accounting has been a good career choice for me, it sure doesn't help one gain skills with composition.

Rather than just place the pepper in the middle of the scene, on Saturday night, I painted it as though it was trying to exit the scene.

#205 - Exit Stage Left - 6" x 6" - hardboard

After breakfast on Sunday, I painted this one. I did this painting in 20 minutes, although the 20 minutes only went towards actual painting. I did not start the timer until I was done drawing.

#206 - Too Late - 6" x 6" -  hardboard

Both titles just popped in my head. Yes, I do think I am funny or at a minimum, I amuse myself.

Today's Painting, Plus A Few Historical Ones

This is how today's painting, plus how 11 older paintings,look.

This blog post could have been titled "Spring Cleaning". I overworked today's painting. While I generally do not walk away from a painting without finishing it when I stopped to think if I could practice "fixing" today's painting or could somehow use it to learn from, the answer in both cases was no. As long as I don't get the habit of doing this very often, I think it's okay to do from time to time.

Actually once I made this decision, it was time to do some additional spring cleaning, so I gessoed over 11 old paintings which were done on hard board. In each case, the painting had been photographed and included on this blog. For many of them, there was something about them that I liked so I had propped them up near where I paint in the basement. I just didn't like them enough and I was ready to let them go. For example, I had 3 separate leaf paintings. I kept the one I liked the best and covered up the other two.

It felt great and very liberating!

I'm A Little Teapot....

This is my last homework painting. I have gotten used to painting from photos, so painting from "life" is a challenge (in a good way).

#204 - Teapot - 6" x 6" hardboard

PIANPS And PAH

I was out of town over the weekend, but wanted to keep up painting regularly and also wanted to work on homework for the new session of painting classes. PIANPS stands for painting in a new place syndrome. Three of these paintings were done while I was staying at my Aunt's home. While I was careful with my set up and brought my own double layer of plastic to protect the table, I never settled into feeling comfortable. My Aunt was great. It was me. I was a bit fretful, even though, I've never had a paint disaster. Also, the best place to set up had terrible lighting.

We got home early enough that I did a painting at home (PAH) last night. Ah, the comforts of home! I paint in an unfinished corner of the basement, so I have no worries.

Here they are (#200 to #203), painted from 04/20 through 04/23. In the pictures, they are arranged with #200 in the upper left-hand corner going clockwise. #203 was painted at home.

While the paint / brush management is going better and I am enjoying mixing shades of red, all of these are overworked. I liked this apple because it had different and distinct sides. However, I also made things hard on myself, since my "model" was a really dark, Red Delicious apple. I like the dark, dark, purply red of these apples, but it's still a challenge to see the value differences in life. It's getting better and I need to keep working on this.

I find #202 (lower right corner) to be the most interesting and I think the main apple body in #203 (lower left corner) was pretty close to the actual apple.

Another thing I want to work on is the direction of my paint strokes. This might be intuitive for some people, but not for me. When I see a value shape, I'm often at a loss to figure out the best direction of my paint strokes to build / represent the shape. Also, I know that this is another area where some variety is needed.

After class is done, I might do some apple paintings, where one is done without thinking about it, one is done with all horizontal strokes, one with vertical ones, and so on. In fact, it might be interesting to work on two paintings at the same time by deciding which direction is better and doing that on one painting and going the other direction on the other painting.

I like this idea. I wrote it down in my book, so I remember it.