Day Seven of Art Week: Painting

If you've been following my art week you've probably noticed me mention once or twice that painting and color have not really been my things. I've had less experience with them, but that does not mean that I have not attempted the medium, I've just skirted around it, playing with the idea before diving in completely and becoming the master of all mediums (joking).

So, this concludes the final day of art week (day seven) with Painting.

I painted this in high school with watercolor. I found it in my closet about a week ago. I forgot that I even did this and was surprised that I actually like it. Sometimes I find old work and cringe (much like I do when I find old writing). Anyway, for this piece, I started with the colorful horizon, then slapped on the mountain in the back, and finally added the trees using the good old (and FUN!) technique of blowing into a straw in order to push the medium across the paper in random, yet organic, directions.




I also complete this piece in high school and it was later printed in an annual county wide arts magazine. (It got an entire page all to its own. It's a big deal!) It was carved out of scratch board and then painted using watercolor. (For those of you who have not worked with scratch board, it's FREAKING amazing and a great way to start painting because you don't have to worry about getting color outside the lines!) I love the way the feathers turned out.

This was one of my favorite projects to do in high school and it's a great idea if you have a friend who is really into art as well because this kind of work needs two or more artist to complete. You start by finding a reference that you would like to paint. You then split that reference however you want. Then, you paint one half while another artist paints the other half. Finally, you put the pieces together and POOF! you have a completed work of art. For this piece, I did the left half and my friend Sarah did the right. We both started with a half of a photograph taken of our friends Sean, Jenna, and Dane. We both worked with acrylics paints on compact board.

To start, for those of you who don't know (Like me just a few months ago) colored pencil is considered a painting medium and a complete piece is considered a painting. So, this is a painting of a lily. This piece was completed a few months ago when i took a colored encil painting class. It's the first art class I have taken in almost 3 years and it was so nice to be back on that horse. I still love it! In the class, we explored different types of colored pencils and techniques you can use with each. This lily was painted using water soluable color pencils. (They're awesome!) You just add the pigment to your paper and then take a paint brush, loaded with water, and move and blend the pigment in. I love the way the petals turned out on this piece, but I am less than pleased with the leaves. I have very few water soluble colored pencils, meaning less pigments to work with, so the colors just didn't work out.

This is a painting of a beautiful flower. (The name is excaping me at the moment. Maybe one of you knows.) this flower is also from my colored pencil painting class. it was created using Verithin pencils. (Not exactly recommended because Verithin pencils are very hard, but their point is nice and small for detail work. However, I suggest you use Prismacolor pencils for this kind of project. They're expensive, but much softer.) I started this piece in the middle, with the really bright fuscia/magenta color. I used a technique called burnishing where you apply the pigment, go over it with white, apply the pigment again, go over it with white again, pigment again, then finally cover it with a non-pigmented pencil (which is like a clear coat). The result is very saturated and shiny. For the softer pink parts of the petals I applied pigment and then moved and blended that pigment using rubber cement thinner or turpenoid on a q-tip. this flower was my favorite out of all the flowers we did in that class.