Native Ontario Columbine
Fooling around with grasses
I quite like this poem, it sort of yo-yo's between grandiose and minute.
Earlier this year I took an expressive figure drawing course at Wyndham Art Supplies (March 28th - April 18th). The focus was on getting moods and the media was gesso and ink. It was quite neat, we started out with a clear acrylic sheet and then painted the outline and 'mass' of the model. When we were ready, we painted in the shading onto the gesso. As usual, I was a bit slow getting started because my proportions were a bit off. Nonetheless it was quite fun. Below are some of my better ones.
*Disclaimer, there's gonna be nudity.*
This was from the first session. The mood here was something like surrender. This was my favorite from that day. For this, we used strong coffee to make a sepia shade.
The next session, we focused on vulnerability, in a child-like sort of way. One of the problems I faced was that if I started with the ink too early, it got mixed in with the gesso, which wasn't inherently bad, but it made it difficult to get a really intense color. Here I used a mix of sepia and black ink.
The next three paintings are from the final day. The emotion we were trying to capture was something like triumph and feeling powerful. I really liked this day, I think it was a combination of actually sitting in a good spot, so I don't get poses with massive for-shortening and also having loosened up and gotten the hang of it. I think the model was also quite good at capturing the mood in the poses.
Now, for these last two I decided to experiment with (mua-na-na) black gesso. I had some lying around from another project and thought I'd take a crack at starting with the shadows and pulling the highlights out with white acrylic paint. I quite like the effect.
Fortunately, we didn't need to worry about faces, because otherwise I would have never finished :S.
There was a third model between child-like and triumph. It was a man. I didn't post any of those paintings because I didn't like how they turned out. I always seem to have trouble drawing men. I'm not sure why. Something to do with the proportions and something to do with landmarks on the torso perhaps. It's something I would like to work on.
Nevertheless, I will end with triumph!!
I saw a bunny this morning. (Snapshots count as art...so I decided to add it to the blog. I had to crop the photo too, so that makes it so much more than pointing and shooting, right?)
Anyway, (lol) I was walking from Uni and I saw this baby rabbit happily munching on the foliage. I tried to get my phone out as quickly and smoothly as possible. The photo was taken just as it was about to run off because a particularly noisy (and obnoxious) car came by and the rabbit decided it was time to hop off.
Earlier that morning I saw a Blue jay. That was fabulous because, I'd never seen one up close before. I've always seen cardinals, which I thought were pretty neat, but never a blue jay. The significance being that they are the only two birds I'm aware of in my city that are completely one color. Not just a splash of red, touches of yellow, or a green cowl, the whole bird is this brilliant, vibrant color.
I thought those two sightings were the coolest things ever, and given the crappy quality of the rest of my day, they were decidedly the highlight of it. I think it's really weird how excited most of us get about seeing wildlife. We're so far removed from nature in our little worlds, that any animal encounter is precious.
On the topic of birds, here's another example, this shot was taken a number of years ago as a gift for my mother. These birds lived close to our house, and would fly over in a very specific pattern, constantly chatting to each other to harvest our dog's fur that had been shed all over the yard, presumably for their nest. My Mum loved these birds and it really brightened her day to see them while they were around.
It took me hours and hours of waiting to get just a handful of good photos. She appreciated the gift and so it was worth it.
I find street art interesting. The term is really just a socially acceptable way of saying vandalism. Graffiti even sounds cool, the way it rolls off the tongue. Below are a few interesting pieces of art that I caught on my camera phone.
I don't remember where I found this. But it fits with the graffiti theme.
I just like the idea of this one. It's not fantastic to look at, but I'm always excited when someone else has read the book.
This is my favorite. I snapped it up on campus at Uni. I just think it's beautiful, the lines on the cat are nice and subtle/absent in some spots which makes it seem lighter because you eyes just fill in what's missing.
The last few posts have been about my watercolor paintings, and I mentioned the course I took a while ago, but fail to go into detail. Well, here it is...
In May and June I took a watercolor techniques course at Wyndham Art Supplies. It was a great class. I really enjoyed the opportunity to learn how to handle this medium, as I find it is one of the more difficult ones. With acrylic, it's quite easy to just use straight out of the tube. If you make a mistake, you can go over it (in theory).
I've always liked the idea of watercolor, but I never really knew how to use it properly. I liked that Karen provided simple instructions like: Watercolor, no matter how intense the pigment, is supposed to have the consistency of...water.
The other thing I liked about the class was that while we learned techniques, we actually made finished pieces. Which is much more satisfying that having sheets and sheets of practice.
Painting the First: Aurora Borealis.
For this painting we learned about wet on wet techniques for the sky (along with a kind of paper mounting). We also learned some dry brush techniques for the tree silhouettes.
Painting the Second: Northern Ontario Lake at Dawn
This project taught us about graded washes, wet-on-wet, dry brush and layering. I ran into a bit of a snag in that my land mass became gigantic. We created the reflection first and that was done with wet-on-wet, which you have little control over. Otherwise, it's still quite pretty.
Painting the Third: A meadow
This is my favorite. This project was used to teach us about composition, layering and texture, salt techniques (not used in this one), perspective, clouds and grasses, color theory and effective mixing/use of greens.
Overall, I'm quite pleased with the three paintings. The first two I gave away as gifts, the third I've got in a safe plastic sheath. I take it out from time to time to have a gander at it. I'm really glad I took and course and I look forward to other watercolor classes (that I can afford haha).
So, I just did a wonderful watercolor course at Wyndham Art Supplies and I learned TONS! It was nice to get some technical instruction, but more on the course later.
I bought a bunch of watercolor supplies for my birthday and yesterday was the first day that I did some painting on my own since the course ended, more importantly, it was a completely novel idea, not a copy of something we did in class. It was nice. It's a really small piece and it took me several hours (with all of the waiting), but it finally gave me a chance to use the silver and gold watercolors that I failed to resist in the store. Fortunately, the masking fluid (see above) resisted the washes really well (hoho) and I got a really bright silver moon and vibrant golden hare.
I've had a bit of a thing with hares lately. For a long time, I had an affinity with rabbits. No, it's not because of their breeding habits. In second year, I took part in a guided meditation for a poetry course. When we were asked to visualize an animal, I got a rabbit and it stuck. The change into a hare specifically came recently. Mostly I really REALLY like a line from Terry Pratchet's newest Tiffany Aching book "I shall Wear Midnight":
"The hare runs into the fire.
The hare runs into the fire.
The fire it takes her, she is not burned.
The fire it loves her, she is free"
There will probably be a few more peices involving hares.
Anyway, below is the finished product. It's not perfect, but I'm really quite proud of it. I painted it on this recycled cotton paper that has a really textured finish. I think it gave it a nice effect.
Colours: Indigo, prussian blue, olive green, hooker's green, veridian, pyrelene green, alizarin crimson, (to mute the greens), quinacridone gold, cadmium yellow, yellow ocher, gold and silver.
My parents live far away, so gift giving tends to be difficult to say the least. I've found that the easiest gifts tend to be paper in nature. So I'll paint something for a holiday or birthday and send it to them. It's a hell of a lot cheaper than mailing something three-dimensional. Also, I can say that it's just documents and there's never any duties on their end. Here are two paintings I made for my Dad and the corresponding mess.
