Day Eight

Today we went down to the lab and worked with our selected photo for our self portrait in photoshop.  I chose this one.  When i get started on my painting I will upload some images of its progress.  We used photoshop on it by doing hue, saturation, cutout and poster.  I didn't send the final image to my email but I will post the painting as it goes along so you can see.  We then went back to class and painted in our vase and finished up our flower stems.  The vase was put in with light dry brush strokes to indicate that it is see through glass.

Day Seven

Today we worked on putting the flowers in.  We made sure to have a good base of stems with some dark greens and then we put in a main shape of each flower with a light gray.  We put in each of the flowers centers and then we put in the darker areas of each petal with a darker gray than the base.  The light parts of the flowers were put in with small thick heavy strokes of paint.  After we did this we took pictures of ourselves for our photoshop self portraits.

Day Six

Today we put in the lights and darks on some of our books.  To do this we took our base color and mixed it with its compliment too make the darker areas.  Then we mixed in lighter tones to show the light ones.  We put the light areas on in a dry brush to show the how old the books were.  The dry brush was put on in just a few strokes, as to not overdue the paint.  Then we worked on the little bird sitting in the nest.  We used darks first and then put on the lights.  The nest we did the same and put light brush strokes of a brighter yellow to show the different ways the "straw" was sitting.

Day Five

We learned how to do the lights/highlights on our pots.  We did it by using small strokes of white mixed with our warm yellows or cool blues depending on how the light source showed it.  We also put in the base of the pitcher.  We used white and mixed blue and orange to make the gray and then we put in vague details of the designs on the pitcher.

Day Four

Today we worked on perfecting our angles of our books and continuing the blocking stage.  We then worked on how to see reflections in a metallic object.  A rule to remember is to always mix the main color of the object with the color it is reflecting.  Start from the darkest shadows and work to the lighter shades.  Paint what you see in areas and don't worry if it looks like it's wrong. Step back and look at it as a whole.

Day Three

Today we learned how to block in the objects with color.  We use the darkest color of each object and fill it in like a coloring book.  We work dark to light.  We also learned how to get grays by mixing complements.

Day Two

Today we learned how to prep our canvases.  We used a wash to cover the canvas.  This was done using mineral spirits mixed with burnt sienna.  We learned how to create a painting using thick over thin lines.  Starting with abstract.  We learned that we need to make at least three objects go off the canvas.  We also learned how to create a focal point using several different methods.  Some of these are:  dark and light objects, line convergence, how detailed objects are, color choices, light sources, fuzzy/clear objects, and placement.

Tools of the trade

Freezer paper, easle, boar bristle brushes, view finder, windsor newton, winton paint.