First Painting Class

There was so much that was new at the first painting class!  The drawing on the panel, using a viewfinder, painting on a panel rather than paper, mixing colors, trying to capture a shape using paint strokes and the value of a color.  I was such a newbie that I didn't know that I should divide up my background to give my painting some visual interest and grounding.

Orange colors can be hard to mix.  Plus, you have to go heavy on the paint or do more than one layer of color.  The same is true of yellow too.

As I capture my early paintings in this blog, I may prep some of the panels with black gesso so that I can use them again.  I don't want to keep all or even most of my early work.  That's a big part of the reason to have the blog.  It can be my tool for looking back.  I might keep this one, just because it is the first one.  Here is my orange from the first night of painting class on 03/10/16.

My Favorite Painting Tool

I like paper, paint brushes, and paint, but my favorite painting tool is a viewfinder.  I was introduced to this handy, dandy tool on the first night of painting class.  I was feeling nervous and not sure what to expect.  When I was given the viewfinder and told how to use it, my anxiety went down immensely.

You use a viewfinder to compose what you are going to paint.  For now, what works best for me is to break up the horizontal and vertical frames into 4 equal pieces.  It's a bit tricky to hold the viewfinder in one place, look through it with only one eye open, and draw on your painting surface, but it gets easier with practice.

I made the bottom one myself using a light weight piece of cardboard.  Heavy card stock would probably also work.  I outlined a square pad of post-it notes and cut out the square.  Viola!  For a different aspect ratio, you can easily make an appropriate viewfinder or use one like the composition finder in the picture.  On the back, it shows different aspect ratios and there's a sliding piece that blocks out to just the aspect ratio that you want.

If I'm working directly from a picture, I just draw lines directly on the picture.

Finished!

I finished the painting of the tortoiseshell cat.  It was an experiment, since it's not clear how to capture the colors.  It turned out a little abstract.  Still, I'm generally pleased with the end result in that this painting was from a drawing.  This cat has sharper angles in her face versus the other cat below.  I also like the eyes in this one.

Here is a cat painting that I started on Friday and finished today.  The finished cat is okay.  The composition is off.  The cat is "wearing" a Christmas ribbon tied in a bow and there's not enough of the bow to really see that it's a bow.

Tee hee.  I started signing my paintings!

Painting in Process

It's hard to paint a tortoiseshell-colored cat.  Here are two work in process pictures.

When I showed the second one to DW, he said the colors verged on abstract.  Hey, new idea.  Maybe I'll paint a couple of cats with alternative colors.  There are no rules and I'm having fun learning!

Also, I'm pleased with how my drawing skills are coming along. Dividing up pictures and painting surfaces into 4 equal parts really, really helps.

Warts and All

I censored myself in my last post and I'm amused at myself for doing that.  Here is an experiment from early January.  I was playing with creating a dandelion-like flower, similar to a Charles Beck woodcut in my kitchen, using the end of my brush in concentric circles.  Actually, I tried several paintings this way.  They all bombed.  Part of the problem was that yellow and orange colors don't have good coverage.  You need to add extra layers of color.

Live and learn.

January and February Paintings

Here are some paintings that I did in January and February, in addition to doing a lot of trees!

I purchased a basic set of acrylic paint that included blue, red, white, black, and yellow, some inexpensive student brushes (brights from size 4 to 8).  The surface was heavy paper (100 pound) in a spiral notebook.  The paper was 6 inches square.

I used artist's tape to create a frame around each piece of paper and prepped the paper with black gesso paint.

In painting class, we did not use black paint.  In both the above painting and the one below, I get why. It looks too harsh.  Dark grey or brown works much better.  In my knitting life, I used to love how colors looked next to black yarn.  One of my favorite all around creative people, Kristin Nicholas had a lovely dark brown yarn in her yarn line and used this in lieu of black in many of her designs.  She mentioned in her blog or in an article that black and white yarns tend to sell the most, but that she did not use them much in her knitting designs.

I still have a long way to go on capturing shadows, but at least I've improved from my first several attempts!

One time I tried to loosely recreate a picture from the newspaper.

I was happy with the result.

Towards the end of February, I quit painting and waited for painting class to start!

Daily Painting - 04/29/16

I took the day off of work.  It was too cold to garden outside this morning, so I did things inside, including this painting of an apple.

Self critique:

• I like the apple.  This is the third time that I've painted this apple and this one captures the shape pretty well.  This apple is going into a Waldorf salad tonight. 
• I do not like the background.  It's too complicated and does not work. The apple is on a place mat on a table with the wall in the back.  The shadow really does not work!!

Paint and learn!!!