Oh Joy !! Classes Resume!

Last night we resumed our painting class. We did not, however, resume our paintings we started in our first class. Instead we started a still life in order for Marilyn to get us all on the same page. The results are below. It ain't good - as a matter of fact, right now it's rather bad. That said, it is (I hope) going to get better and it will start getting better tomorrow night after I get home from work.




There are white spaces in the body of the image, the fruit in the bowl doesn't look like fruit, the cloth on the table isn't complete and the bowl isn't complete. And there isn't any background, either. But I'm gonna get it there. Try, anyway. When I'm done with this I'm going to do another, hopefully better, piece based on the same image. But I need to do this one first in order to figure out what I need to do differently.

Meantime, below is a photo of a quick sketch I drew one evening while waiting for class to start. It was my first attempt at doing something to explore form and texture.



It is simply the end of a piece of molding, like baseboard or ceiling trim. But it surprised me as it came to life on the page. It was just an idea and I tried it and it seemed to work. That simple little success is what really opened my eyes to what I might be able to do - and how much fun it is to just be able to create an image of something you can see in your mind. Now I'm painting - something I never in my wildest dreams, ever thought I would be able to do. It is, to me, amazing. Or it will be, when it gets better than it is right now.

stick to plain old pencil or oils

I've decided I don't like colored pencil - or, at least, I don't like what I do in colored pencil. Perhaps it's because I've had no training in the medium, and therefore have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. Yeah, that's the reason - that's my story and I'm sticking to it. Anyway, the colored pencil piece found its way to the trash bin last night, nevermore to be resurrected. The thing I have in mind works better in plain old ordinary pencil anyway.

Tonight is Halloween. In honor of the class I'm not taking tonight, I am going to work on the painting. I am going to try to finish the underpainting so it's nice and dry for class next week. And then during the coming week I'm going to start a (black) pencil sketch of the piece I tried in colored pencil. I'll post it here as it goes along.

sketch sample

What you see below is the result of my search for a method of depicting a stone wall realistically. Center right are several abortive attempts at getting something I like. Center left is the one I feel works best for me - it is, as you can see, the largest of the areas depicted - once I got it I sort of ran with it for a while.



I have to apologize for the quality of the reproduction here. This is a photograph taken under incandescent light. Lighting it with flash didn't work out very well either - the flash washed out the image and reduced the contrast. Next time I'll try scanning.

Anyway, the wall isn't exactly what the quay is going to look like, but now I have a method for rendering stone that makes sense to me and I can go back to my color pencil sketch and pick up where I left off.

While waiting for the next class ...

The quay that the boat lies alongside is made of stone; weathered, flat stones that are wider than tall and rather pale in color. They look like old, weathered limestone to me, but I don't know rocks very well, I suppose they could be almost anything. Anyway, as a little project to hold me over to the next class, I thought I would try a little sketch in colored pencil that includes an element that's in the original photograph but that I'm leaving out of the painting. Just astern of the fishing boat there's a small, white sailboat tied to a line that runs to the quay. So I thought to 'zoom in' on the sailboat and draw the quay, the sea beyond and the hill and sky beyond that.

I have one thing to say. Grrrrrr.

That quay is the hardest, most tedious thing to draw that I could have ever tried to do. I have finally found a way to draw it that looks good (and accurate), but it has taken a while and a lot of concentration and effort. I actually did searches on the Internet looking for help and found what I needed on a site sponsored by Blick (my favorite art company). I also saw a step-by-step painting tutorial in 'Leisure Painter' magazine (from the U.K.) which included a seawall, and that included the same kind of resolution suggested on the Blick site, so that's what I've gone with and it's working out quite nicely. I will put up some samples tonight.

Working in colored pencil is so different than doing oil, or charcoal or anything else I've tried. I find myself outlining, again, and that's not what I should be doing. Old habits are hard to break. When I get closer to what I'm trying for with the colored pencil I'll put it in here, but not until I'm happier with what I'm doing than I am right now.

9 days until the next class - not counting today.

Stoked - Part II

Okay - this is my first attempt at uploading a picture to the blog. It looks like it worked okay.

What you see above is my very first painting and it is in the very earliest stages of preparation. Because I don't think I really understood what 'underpainting' really is until after the class (and I had time to reflect on what I saw and learned), what you see is a very preliminary outline of what I'm working toward. What I have to do next is wash over the whole surface with a thin, neutral color - hopefully thin enough so that the darker areas I have mapped out already will show through. Then I can re-darken and then add highlights to map the lighter areas. When the underpaint is done, it should look like a relatively complete, but monocolor , painting.

The end result will be far more colorful. I hope.

My next class is the first Wednesday in November (it was NOT my decision to skip next Wednesday, but everbody else seemed to think it was important to be home for Halloween ;>) ). By that time I should be finished with the underpaint. If so, I will update this diary with another picture of the picture. So far, the working name of my piece is "Call me Ishmael". It will probably change by the time it's done - my son says the name sounds 'a little borrowed'. I think he means pretentious. Perhaps it is - but it helps me set the mood.

Stoked!!!

I am so STOKED! Last night was our first Oil Painting class and was it COOL. And let me tell you, boys and girls, it is way easier to create a grey scale in oils than it is in pencil.

We learned about brushes and canvas and gesso and Impasto and Alla Prima and all kinds of stuff last night. And then we started on our paintings. Actually, what we did was to begin an underpainting - which is where one blocks in the relative light and dark values of the piece. I have mine sort of blocked in and between now and the next class I am going to wash in a light grey tone over the whole canvas to make sure there is no bare canvas anywhere.

The subject of the painting is the beached fishing boat I took a picture of on the Ireland trip in 2000. There are actually, to my eye, several good paintings in that one photograph. I think I may wind up painting this scene (or elements of it) more than once - there is just so much there. Later, when I get better, I want to paint the picture I took of Alex standing on the cliff at Clifden, also in Ireland, and also from the same trip. Ireland is an amazing place. We were there in November, and at that time of year it's like the whole country is one great big art studio - the whole place is side lit because the sun never gets very high in the sky when you're that far North.

Anyway, back to class. I think I need better brushes than what I bought - I have a couple of sable brushes and they're great, but I have some synthetic brushes and they're too stiff - I don't like them as much as I like my hair brushes. And the Reeves paints - when I squeezed out my first dollops of paint onto my pallet to begin mixing up my 'neutral' for the underpainting, there was almost as much linseed oil as there was paint. Not good.

Tonight I am going to take a picture of my painting and post it here. I am going to try to document the progress of my painting as it becomes whatever it is going to be when it is done. So I will take a shot tonight and then another right before we go back for our second class - because I intend to have the entire underpaint done before our next class - which is in two weeks - we are taking Halloween off - so it is going to look different in two weeks than it does now.

All supplies in hand ...

Wednesday is the first painting class and Marilyn responded to the email I sent her asking what materials I should bring to class. The answer - bring one canvas and everything else.. Since all three of the canvases I own are 16x20, I think I need to fabricate something that will allow me to safely carry a wet 16x20 canvas in my car. Annie will probably have an idea along those lines - I must be sure to ask her about that.

Except for (possibly) some watercolors I did as a very small child -- Oh!! and some paint-by-numbers I did as a kid - I have never really PAINTED a picture in my life. I am coming at this from no experience or understanding or anything that will install any confidence in my ability to produce anything at all that might be worth looking at.

Again, we are prompted to use a photograph we have taken for the class. I think, this time, I am going to use the photo of the beached fishing boat I shot in Ireland during our Thanksgiving trip in November of 2000. I have a print which I rendered like a watercolor on canvas textured paper; it is a fairly severe crop of the original. I think it may make a good subject for a painting. So ... I have all my supplies, I have my subject, now all I need is the courage and the skill.