painting 3

it's a new semester and i'm painting again. this time it is a bit more specific. i'm learning the Acrylic Painting Techniques. My new instructor has a very realistic style, as opposed to my old instructor who has a kind of painterly style. I am very enthused to learn from him, and gain some new insight into this painting thing.

he let me borrow materials the first class, but I will have to get my own for next. he had acrylics that stayed-wet, which is awesome. the acrylics i used in my last painting class dried way too easily. but yeah, the material list is so long! probably worth it though...

i had a shaky start. but when he saw my finished work, he said "boy, you really hit the ground running". i said "thank you". he asked if I had taken any painting classes before. I said "yeah, another one". He said, "it shows". It felt good to hear, given I didn't think it was so great. I felt he was humoring, but a number of people in the class complemented the work as well. so i guess what i learned in last class did pay off. a couple of techniques that were useful from last class: thinking about composition, the preliminary sketches (the teacher had to remind me to do it at first), how to see (i had to take a deep breath and really stare before I started), the underdrawing, the color wheel and complementary colors, overpainting, and scumbling techniques. ok, the last two i stole from the book I bought ages ago on acrylic painting techniques.

the class was intimidating at first (and I guess I would still be intimidated, if they weren't acceptant of my picture), since everyone seems like professional hardcore artists. each of their works were done skillfully and with care. mine wasn't a realistic depiction, but interesting I guess because of choice of composition and my loose simplistic style. i hope i will be able to do realistic pictures though by the end of class. ..

anyway, yeah, the theme of class was to take an orange and make an interesting composition out of it. we could do anything. so i ripped mine open and peeled off the skin in an irregular way so it resembled an onion and put a pallete knife right through the center. I set the orange facing me so that I was staring at the tip of the pallete knife. oh by the way, the canvas size he is making us use initially is the smallest possible (8 by 10). this contrasts heavily with the large canvii I'm used to from the other class, but change is good. the idea was to make the orange larger than life. I developed the orange in stages to give it texture: lots of lots of overpainting. and I used colors freely. in painting it really doesn't matter as long as you convey the lighting patterns with enough contrast in your color scheme. and a lot of times when adding new colors, I would leave a little bit of the original color in the brush. this had a nice blending effect. a trick i learned in last class. also, i learned to smooth out my edges and not leave any tiny white spaces on the paper. my other teacher had taught me to let the contrast in color make natural edges as opposed to drawing them directly.

the teacher didn't really tell us any new techniques. just observed a lot, made nice comments, treating us all like masters in our own rite. i'm kind of hoping he does get into the techniques though. the class is still good without i guess: lots of encouragement, lots of time, no stress and inspiring people. but i really want to master acrylic painting. that's what i'm there for. i wanna be at the level of my instructor. hope he passes the knowledge on.