Still Life Week 4

This still-life turned out surprisingly well. Surprising because we lost 90 minutes when we attended a lecture on oil paints (which was awesome). And also because in the beginning it looked like crap. But I'm finding that whereas I'm a coward in almost all types of art, with oil painting I'm courageous. I am a superhero. :) I think because it's so easy to correct mistakes. As my expectations rise though I can feel the old fear coming back, but I am trying not to succumb to it. Anyways we're starting glass this week and I'm anticipating a string of failures.

Of all my still-lifes so far, this one has the best sense of light, and also the best unity of both color and light.

Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones

These bones charts are for my Anatomy class (a.k.a. "Naked People Parts"). I wasn't looking forward to doing them, but they were actually pretty fun. In computer science class we never learned what a 'manubrium' was. Though they also don't teach us about singleton classes in art school...

Fun for All Ages

Man I love my still life class. This was a full-session painting, so 6 hours. For some reason I found it a bit more difficult. I think because we didn't really have a warmup. Also this really pretty Persian girl was sitting next to me, which I found very distracting. However in the end it turned out pretty well. I found out some of my classmates really like my paintings, which is encouraging.

Adding a Bit of Color

I'm really happy with how these next 2 still lifes turned out. In the first, we added yellow ochre to our palette to differentiate between warm light and cool shadows. That jar on the right was pretty complicated.

In the second we used a limited palette of cadmium yellow, cadmium red, ultramarine, white, and black. (I also used terra rosa for the background). I totally got infatuated with the cup on the right, and finished it before even starting the other objects, which we're not supposed to do. Then I had to rush to finish the other three. I really like this one, and I used many concepts from Color & Design.

I love my still life painting class - the 6 hours goes by like nothing!

Monkey See, Monkey Two

I sat in on the first couple classes of Printmaking, although I'm probably going to end up dropping this class. The first day we did a block print. Interestingly we carved in linoleum instead of wood, because it is *supposed* to be easier to carve, and more consistent. Everyone was complaining about sore wrists and hands, and at least 2 people stabbed themselves with the carving tool, ouch! :) It was fun though, and this Japanese-style monkey print turned out pretty well. The inking is trickier than I expected, and you can see small differences between these two prints.

Still-Life 101

Finally my first painting class! On the first day we did these black and white paintings. I took an oil painting class in Palo Alto before going to school, so these seemed pretty simple. But I really like this incremental approach they have. It's like little baby steps, each one teaching something new and building on the previous. It's the way I prefer to learn.

I think my shapes turned out well, but the paintings are too light. Same thing with my charcoal drawings. :) Hopefully it will correct itself like the charcoal did. The main thing is that this was insanely fun! I know I made the right choice majoring in painting.

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