I'm so long overdue in reporting on my progress in my painting class. I guess my major complaint about the course is that I had alot of unfinished work... so it made me feel as if little was accomplished.
These fish, for example. We were each to bring a dead fish to class. They were gathered and we arranged three still life scenes to paint. We spent 3 or 4 class periods on the fish. We would freeze them in groups between classes, take them out frozen at the beginning of class, and paint as they were thawing. We were to inform the painting with the tactile experience of touching the scales of a fish, an exercise we did earlier in the class. Eventually, the fish were just falling apart with so much freezing and thawing, their appearance became less and less appealing. The scales were almost impossible to render as it was... on day a fish would be iridescent with purple undertones, then the next class that fish had green undertones and was no longer illuminated the same way in the light? I spent too much time redoing sections of the painting. How do you complete a still life when the subject changes so much? Some would say that that experience of change should be represented in the painting. I failed in that. This was my progress. I think there is lots of potential here, regardless of my complaints. This painting is on parchment, about 20"x12".
We lingered over motion that can be portrayed in still lifes, how atmosphere is created, how light shifts and color is relevant. The best way to learn something like that is to copy an original masterpiece. For the life of me I can't remember the artist this is, or the title of this painting, which is terrible... but the point is that we mimicked his work and approach to this still life.
We also did a series of exercises on objects in motion... How is visual movement conveyed in a painting? What if your subject isn't still, but is moving? We each found an object from the landscape and dropped it repeatedly and studied their movement, then tried to paint that action. Wow! Talk about difficult. I had a huge leaf, like a kite, and it kinda see-sawed to the ground, flipping over itself, and became larger as it approached me. Do you see it?
Our final project for the semester - we spent a month on this still life, and it was almost enough time to complete it. We each brought in some fruit or object, and we had time to really paint the scene. (above, the scene from my viewpoint). Obviously the same frustrations exist with elements that were never in the same place, the cloth was alway completely different each time.
What I thought was amazing was how different everyone's rendering of the exact same scene was! Different compositions, different colors, different ways of seeing and styles of painting. I tend to avoid making an actual, obvious stroke with my brush. I always want to rub it out or soften a line. Blake encouraged us to paint the backgrounds of our scene, to include the atmosphere and environs of the room - if that is possible. Not to generalize and just paint everything that is not the staged still life a neutral color, or a black. Still in progress I feel, but not too bad, I think. With a couple more class periods it could be better!
Parchment, approximately 24"x14"
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