Painting: Landscape and Narrative

Cappadocia

Acrylic on canvas, 18"x24"

Finally, a painting in colour!! Landscape painting assignment.

I really struggled with this. Probably because the size is bigger than the previous two, and the amount of detail greater, and so I think it needs more time and more work to be properly finished. Professor suggests it isn't as compelling as my other paintings because it doesn't have the kind of mysterious light and shadow effect that I so adore and am willing to spend hours upon hours rendering. Probably true.

The painting's based off a photo I took last year in the beautiful mountainous regions of Turkey. Really cool rocks. Really cool little cave houses in the rocks, if you look closely (I wish I could have articulated these better in the paint.)

The Farm

Acrylic on canvas, 18"x24"

Halloween assignment: a dramatic scene from a horror/sci fi show. Because I am a huge nerd I chose to do a scene from the TV series Battlestar Galactica, which I love. It's kind of complicated to explain what's going on to someone not familiar with the show, but she's drugged and injured, trying to escape from a creepy hospital building filled with robots who look exactly like people. And want her to have babies.

I think the creepiness kind of speaks for itself even without context, though.

Really proud of the light and shadow in this one. It was a long painting -- easily fourteen, fifteen hours. The perspective is more than a little whacked out now that I look at it, but I don't think it matters too much. Makes it kind of disconcerting.

Painting: Still Life

We started out the semester with doing still lifes from photos, focusing on the handling of the paint as well as being able to see and create value/darks and lights. 

I'm really big on dramatic, directional lighting, so I waited until the sun was setting and there were long shadows in the apartment to set up my still lifes so I could take photos as reference for the paintings.

Still Life I

Black and white acrylic on canvas, 16"x20"

Really ambitious painting -- small details, leaves, transparency, minute textures, drapery....I think it still needs more work to be totally finished in the details, but I'm letting it go.

Still Life II

Black and white acrylic on canvas, 16"x20"

Professor disliked the composition of the photo, but said my painting saved it. That the painterliness of it -- washes, brushstrokes, the feeling of the paint -- added something to it that the original photo did not have.

Still Life III

Burnt umber, black and white acrylic on canvas, 16"x20" -- ok, I cheated, I used some red and yellow too, because I couldn't take how desaturated the lights became when I added white.

Went way more traditional on this one. Fruits and bowls and all. I think it is one of the best paintings I've ever done, honestly! I focused a lot on conveying the texture and weight of the forms. I'm particularly proud of the onion, I painted it while listening to the first presidential debate...pretty intense, haha.

3D: Wire, Paper, Felt and Fabric

We get the opportunity to try out different mediums in 3D class and make small works based on them. The emphasis so far has been on handmaking, the act of making, rather than any idea or concept.

Teacher says we're going to be doing more abstract stuff for now on, though.

Kayaker

Wire figure with moving arms and paddle

Inspired by Alexander Calder's circus figurines.

Paper seedling pots

Newspaper

Made with modified origami pattern.

Scalemate

Needle felted sheep's wool, dyed with lemon and cherry Kool-aid

(An object from the webcomic Homestuck -- I just wanted to make it.)

Creature

Sewed from felt, stuffed with polysterene and given button eyes.

The little scarf is a scrap of cloth I hand-dyed when the Textiles department had an indigo-dying event.

2D: Colour Studies

Various colour mixing exercises done for 2D: colour translations core class.

I have quite a bit of painting under my belt, so I feel that to some extent I've been doing all these things without really being aware of them. It's always good to consciously practice them, though.

Plus, we used goauche, which is a medium I'm not familiar with at all, so I enjoyed learning to handle a new medium. It's really fast and opaque!

Value studies with lamp black and chromatic black

Goauche on bristol

Complementary colour pair studies 

Goauche on bristol

'Old Masters' colour palette with yellow ochre, burnt umber and payne's grey

Goauche on bristol

4"x6" colour studies: chromatic lights, chromatic darks, saturated, desaturated, colours I hate, colours I like

Goauche on bristol

(particularly proud of the lioness, which was painted from a photo I took at the zoo earlier this year.)

Colour constancy studies
Goauche on bristol

Based off photographs of the same scene (view from my balcony!), taken during different times of day and under different weather conditions.

They're focused on the idea that colours change according to their surroundings (duh) but because we see them in relation to each other, we are able to recognise them even under different lightings.