Dont Touch the Edges

The first task in this entire project was to make a good composition. After much time spent fixing different positions for my pool ball and light source, I finally had my mind set on a composition that touched 3 sides. I was eager to get painting- this was my first oil painting i have ever done. Some things i had to focus on was mixing correct colors, color mapping, and getting my pool ball to look round. In the past, I have used acrylics and acrylics dry quicker than these oil paints. Also, something new I came across while mixing my colors is that I could make a black or dark navy blue by mixing ultramarine blue and crimson red. Normally, with acrylics, i would expect that to make purple; however, the oil paint colors are so pigmented by the minerals and chemicals that they made the really dark navy blue. Another aspect of this art was the color mapping. The first step to this was recognizing the different shades of colors and hues in the pool ball and its shadow. Then I had to transfer that to the drawing. A difficult decision to make was whether ii should do more geometrical shapes or smoother shapes. Frankly, i couldn't choose so i made shapes that had curvy edges and straight sides as well. The biggest challenge was making the pool ball look round. I met this challenge by adding the correct amount of white and yellows to my paint when doing the highlights. For example, I broke up the colors in the small circle with the 2 in it into dark greens and light yellows. My painting really works because the bright crimson red really pops behind all the dark blues and purples. During this project, I continues to learn how to simplify my work and i will bring that into my next  project because painting simple makes it easier to express what I'm trying to present. I learned from Zoe that using complementary colors makes the art work really pop and look vibrant. If i could redo my project, I would pick a different color paper because the navy blue ball and purple paper is kind of boring. The best part of my artwork is the variety of colors i was able to present on my pool ball because it makes my eye want to travel all around to see how light and dark the pool ball can get.

Snow Shadows

Expressing White With Colors

This was a project I worked on last semester in Intro To Drawing. We were learning how to draw white objects in color. The original instructions were to choose either cool colors or warm colors to use on your project. I just really liked the blend of warm and cool to give my white objects a sort of realistic coloring. The easiest part of this oil pastel piece was the object to the far left. The geometrical shapes made it easy to place the colors where they needed to be. On the contrary, some of the harder challenges i faced was making the blue glass vase in the back not look like one of the white objects. To overcome this challenge, I decided to make the blues more defined and darker and to make the highlights and reflections in the glass really white so they stood out more. I think the blending of my highlights and shadows, being cool and warm colors, worked nicely. It was difficult to make sure they didn't blend to become green, but overall i think it turned out really well.

Painting with Peggie

Lessons I learned from Peggi Kroll
1. By examining and copying the work of other artists, i learned that i can be introduced to different types of art. I thought the way i had always been painting was the only way i could paint well, but after looking and copying other artists' techniques, i know now that i can have fun and express and experiment with my artwork.
2. I learned about abstracting reality. Peggie Kroll simplifies what she is looking at. With her work, less detail is better because you can appreciate the simple color shapes that can be found in everyday objects.

3. By "mapping" out colors, you draw the shapes and their boundaries with other color shapes. Doing this makes it easier when painting your colors because its easier to see where you should drop certain colors. Color mapping is almost like number painting except you're not drawing numbers in the areas.
4.

•  start simple, because if you start with detail there is nothing else to add
• paint quickly, its more exciting
• if you hold your brush further out on the handle and not like a pencil, you get more options as to what kind of brush strokes you can do
• abstract is different from ____. Abstract is taking things from reality and making it a little distorted, but you can still tell what the object is
• what is the point of painting something to look exactly like a picture?
• use a thick brush, i was using an "eyelash" brush. You can get enough detail using the edge of a thick brush

   
5. At first, I struggled with this project because i tried to add too much detail and too quickly. Mr. Gaudreau helped me understand that i needed to paint quicker and with bigger brush strokes. He said by painting slow, little brush strokes, it was making it more difficult for me to simplify the painting. Also, he introduced to me the idea that i should hold my brush differently so i could paint different types of brush strokes. Before, I was holding my brush like a pencil.

6. Oil Paint is made up of actual oil, so it dries really slow. Oil Pastel is the solid version of oil paint. Acrylic paint is a plastic based paint, so it dries quickly. Use small amounts of paint because it goes a long way and if you squeeze too much acrylic out, it could dry up and you would waste it.

7. Watching the Alla Prima painting, I learned that each brush stroke should have a defined purpose. The artist painted fast however, you could tell that he intended each brush stroke to be where it was based off of how thick or thin each stroke was and how he twisted his paintbrush. Also, towards the end of the video when the artist added fake words instead of actual words because its way easier than trying to actually do the letters. The artwork suggests and implies to the viewer that there are words there, when the really is not a single word.

8. Peggie Kroll used a few elements of design in the artwork i copied. Some of these elements include: cropping, overlapping, and a broad value scale. She used a defined light source to give really bright highlights on the objects and very dark shadows.

9. When describing a style of painting, "painterly" is used to describe a painting that looks like a painting, not a picture. You can see the brush strokes and the different textures, even the colors not fully blended sometimes.  

10. I learned that impressionism or abstract art can be way more exciting than photo-realistic paintings. When you paint quicker you don't worry about how its going to look, you just express yourself and i think that is really beautiful, so i cant wait to bring that into my next painting.