LJ and NJ

I am beginning two new projects– one each for each of my two painting classes.  Here I’ll post the reference photos for one; another post will have photo for the other.  The first, the mountain scene, is from another wonderful photo Norma took on her trip to Norway last summer.  This one, “Sunrise”, is actually from the very same area as “Sunset” — the one i just finished.  It’s taken an hour (maybe?) later than Sunset and I think she said it’s the same mountain.  Pretty dramatic!  Because teacher for this class likes me to use small canvasses, the canvas for this painting is only 9″ x 12″.  So far I’ve just done the tracing and very small area of sky.

I know there is plenty more i could do with this painting, but really, I’m getting a bit tired of it.  Time to move on.  Learned a lot and ready to apply new insights to new painting.

In the past couple of weeks I’ve worked to put final touches on my pumpkin patch painting.  This included: grating down the windmills and also painting in a blade on the larger windmill. ( i didn’t want to do this because i thought it looked too in-your-face in the photo, but teacher insisted.  Her argument was that the windmill wouldn’t work without the blade.  I said i didn’t care whether it worked or not.  I lost.  And it turned out to be fun to put in the blade just free-hand without worrying too much about whether it matched the photo, which i didn’t want anyway.)  I’m pleased with some things about this painting — like the colors of the pumpkins, figuring out how to make the shadows look shadow-y.  I don’t like the shapes of pumpkins– i wouldn’t buy any of these for Halloween.  I learned a good bit about perspective in trying to get the field in the background and the barn to work.  Definitely worth the effort in terms of stuff to think about..

 

This post refers to my “sunset”(Norway) painting.  So this week at home i continued working on the sky.  Completed the yellow outline of the sun around the clouds in the lower middle part of the sky and also worked in some lighter areas in the dark clouds in the upper right and left of the painting.

Today in class i worked on the grasses in the lower right quadrant .  I wanted the grasses to have the feel of grasses but not be overwhelming.  So what i tried, on advice of teacher, was to use the side of a small “flat” brush with very little paint and then paint with a sideways, horizontal stroke.  I tried that in several places with some success.  After the paint dries in the front grasses I’ll try during this week to add some really tall, thin grasses with maybe a few seed pods to round out the effect.  We’ll see how that goes!

Also today repainted one of the mountains (right side) and changed the angle of the bottom of that hillside and also one hillside on the left side of the painting.  — purpose to improve the “flow” overall.

I repainted both windmills this week in class.  Good exercise in fine movement control – or lack thereof.  Had to hold the painting in my lap to get an angle where my hand was steady enough to attempt those inner things (what are they called?) spokes?  Used a size 0 (as in zero) round brush, and still had some trouble getting the lines fine enough.

Started painting in pumpkin leaves in lower left-hand corner of the painting.  Had to experiment a bit to get a color that was green but that still offered contrast to all the green around.

Teacher says this painting close to being finished.  I don’t agree but i can always work on it at home after she declares that I should begin a new one

I haven’t posted about my “sunset” painting for a little while, so I’ll try to play catch-up.  For the past couple of weeks I’ve worked on the water in the stream; the landscape; and, for the past week, the sky.  Last week in class i asked teacher for ideas on how to correct some of my errors in the sky, especially in respect to the direction in which I’d (mis)painted some of the clouds.  He suggested something i found really shocking but went ahead and tried it anyway.  (I didn’t post last week because the initial step of this process — painting over large portions of the sky with a titanium white mixed with a very small amount of blue — made the painting full of big white blobs.  Next step,, which i worked on during the week, was to begin to apply several coats of a thin gray glaze, all the while shaping the several areas to improve the overall flow of the clouds.). Today in class i added darker gray and adjusted my brush stroke to better help those clouds look like clouds.  It’s also too soon to add some orange and red back into the upper parts of the sky — with oils you just have to be patient.

As to the 4 white stripes you can see — they are a beginning step in making the yellow areas of the sky really shine.  So — my instructions are to outline each of the areas around the purple closed S (where the yellow will be) with white.  Wait for that to dry; then paint yellow on top of the white.  I couldn’t start on the outline of the purple clouds yet because that canvas area still wet; and colors would just run together

For the past two weeks I’ve spent my class time working on pumpkins (and more pumpkins); pumpkin shadows (there are a lot of them, as well!); and fixing the sky, which i’d inadvertently messed up a little.  When i redid the sky i then had to also redo the tracings of the windmills.  Then i tried painting the windmills , but the canvas was wet, so, as you can see, the paints ran together.  I have to wait for all of it to dry before i can take on the windmills a second time. I thought i was going to be ready to paint some large plant leaves (pumpkin leaves, no doubt) which will reside in the lower left hand corner of the painting. – but I’m not there yet. 

This post is about my field of pumpkin painting from my Monday class.  Although i remain less enthusiastic about the methods applied here (especially the tracing business), i am certainly having good experience with fine brush work on smaller canvases. 

As you can tell from the title of this entry, I’ve been working on rocks. Also water. The week before this one i also tried to get a better start on the sky, but haven’t done anything with that this week.  So with rocks i painted in a few along the water’s edge and also worked on the large ones in the fields and hills.  My teacher suggested last week (or maybe the week before) that i adjust the lines of the mountains and hillsides to reflect their downward pitch.

Today i spent a couple of hours working on the rocks on my Sunset/Sunrise painting.  I wanted to get some of this part started before i go to class.  Class is tomorrow morning, and I’m wanting to get some feedback from my teacher, who hasn’t yet seen this painting.Also worked a little on darkening some of the mountains. (Because of glare, you can’t really see the effect on the left side of the painting.). Worked also a little on the water, though i need to think about that a good bit more.  It’s way too saturated an orange.  Will have to experiment some more.