UCM Farm update

Day 1:






It was a pretty windy day...Not my best painting but this one has alot of potential. I need to push my contrast in this one and apply some light colors ontop of my middles.

Day 2:



Within the first 10 minutes of painting, the center bolt of my easel shattered...so I stopped, put the easel in my trunk for time out and then used my backup folding chair. After having a standing easel I dont think i can get used to sitting and painting again. I really like this painting...I think I just need more time on it

Cow Reference photo:

clark and mitchell update

This is just me going back and reworking my old painting since I didnt know we were supposed to bring a larger canvas to work on. Instead I decided to take a painting I liked the concept of but didnt really like my execution of and reworked its color and value. This is the end result.

Next class I will have my larger board ready to go and will be using this as a starting point for that painting. Willey suggested making the bigger painting even more about the sky by cutting out alot of the foreground and making the barn and treeline smaller. My only concern is the same as my first painting on pine street, I think this will only work if I can pull off the big sky...I am a little hesitant but willing to give it a try.

redemption

As I said a few posts ago, I went to my Aunt's house on friday to visit and paint with her in her garden. I wanted to get 2 paintings done however left my smaller masonite board at my dorm so I just decided to do one painting of the same size in the same time that I have been working.





The first picture was from inside my dorm, I am still experimenting with finding a good place near me to take decent pictures, and this is definitely an upgrade from my floor, however I think I am going to start taking the pictures of them outside because as seen here natural lighting seems to make the paintings look more accurate.

I am pretty happy with this painting, definately an improvement from how I did earlier in the week. I want to touch up the plum tree on the left and make it look more delicate and the right side of the house...I think its another small win in my favor and I did feel a little redemption at the end of that painting session

also one thing that really helped me out in this session with my greens was finally finding a dark green that wasnt pthalo...my aunt bought out some art store at one point, I told her i was having problems making dark greens for foliage and she suggested jenkins green. It really made a world of difference in mixing greens

rough week

Here are the paintings I was talking about earlier...I have little things I really like about both paintings however they have massive problems that probably cant be fixed.


The reference image got deleted or didnt stay on the camera or something, All my other images are fine so i wouldnt call it battery failure, probably user error of some sort

Monday 9/14:


This just had problems. I was really interested in the side of that building...and thought "if i can render the side of the building in the interesting manner, it can make up for not really using a whole lot of depth", well turns out I cant really render the side of the building and wish i didnt lose the reference image because its a really interesting building. One thing i really liked about this painting is the sky...as seen here:




Wednesday: 9/16




Nothing really special about this painting. The left side I didnt really know what to do with because I really wasnt all that interested in the cars, so I left it open to decide on later. I handled the buildings better this time around and probably next time around I will get better.

not my most sucessful week ive ever had...however thats not always a bad thing because ive always seemed to learn more from failures so I am not really going to dwell on these. I will set them aside for later work and move on.

Recently...

Last class I painted down on pine street. My friend owns a shop on there so I figured he wouldnt mind if I stood outside his place for a few hours (I kinda feel awkward just setting up somwhere like that without permission...just seems weird)

Class before that I was at the corner of houts and holden next to the wig shop...I really like architecture and buildings and usually take a strong interest in drawing them. Alot of my watercolor 1 paintings were based on European cathedrals using washes and ink so I thought using acrylics and buildings would work out pretty well in my favor...turns out I was wrong

Both paintings I would not call winners...the wig shop painting I kinda just forgot about depth and was completely interested in the side of this building so the composition is pretty awkward and linear..the one on pine street I got to encounter for the first time a variable area, where things are always changing...I didn't really know how to handle this and the painting obviously reflects this.

I know that with areas like that, you just work quick and leave things as they are, but its one of those things that when you are actually there and that comes up you just forget everything...it happens

Tomorrow since I don't have class on Fridays I am going to try and get some justice on painting and go out to my Aunt's garden in Independence. I haven't seen her for a while which is silly since its only a short drive down the road, however from what she says their garden is doing great this year. My plan is to get 2 paintings done in my afternoon there or atleast get a good start on both of them. From what I remember my Aunt used to teach art at a school for students with behavioral issues and she said she plans on digging out some paints and spending the afternoon out with me...so that should be fun.

I will post results from my day trip out there as well as from the last two classes either Saturday or Sunday.

Clark and Mitchell (day 2) as well as a short things to do list

Wednesday I stood at pretty much the same spot, however I turned about 45 degrees and aimed at this white shed that looked pretty run down. Today was also day 1 of using the new $16 easel my dad modified to have a shelf and cupholders (awesome), as well as day 1 of using gesso'ed Masonite panels. I like how inexpensive the Masonite is in comparison to canvas panels and I like how the paint goes on. It seems to be a smoother painting experience all around.

Reference Photo:


Painting:


I really like how the painting is coming along. I need to push the value in it more. The more it sits on my desk the more its starting to grow on me. The shed was painted on with a palette knife.

Things to do:
1. gesso more masonite
2. touch up painting
3. add lightbox or shadowbox to my blog. (these are neat little tools that I used on my final for digital illustration (highly recommended to me by Professor Babcock and Jessica Pine), and I like the ability to allow images to start as thumbnails, therefor viewers can still see the painting in a larger size without having to sacrifice space in the blog itself.)

Lightbox reference and shameless plug:
http://mikefreemanart.blogspot.com/

4. Go back and replace all my images with thumbnails and link them with shadowbox commands...also take new pictures in better light and at a better angle so I can actually get in and crop away from the painting.
5. If i get time this weekend, go paint outside somwhere...afterwords clean one of my palette boxes

A final thought and gameplan for class:
I am going into this class knowing that I didn't do too well in painting 1 and am not the best person at actually rendering things accurately away from my computer. this doesn't really concern me all too much because in the "real world" I will have access to my computer and my sketching abilities are average. However my plan here in this class is to not be concerned with having a successful or failed painting, but learning and getting better each class and with each painting. One of my friends is a huge poker buff...and at one point in time he said something that ive kinda kept with me...he said "getting frustrated and upset over losing doesn't do you any good, analyze why you lost and what happened so in a similar situation you don't make the same mistake." I think poker and art kinda do sit next to each other quite well...it takes skill, patience, practice and well..sometimes you just get lucky

Backtracking (paintings)

This is the first painting, pretty much all that went on here was I started to get used to acrylics again. It has been over 3 years since I last really used the medium to a large extent.



The main problems I had here was yet again unfamiliarity with acrylic as well as I noticed creating definition between trees and also getting colors to work right



This one I had a bunch of problems with composition...after completely restarting on the left half of the painting and kinda fibbing about what was actually there and pushing value, things started to work better for me. I think it still needs work but from where it came from to what it is, I am pretty happy with it



This is pretty much that exact same painting that every midwest artist has done...big blue sky, small little field and a little red barn hiding in the back...I really like how the sky came out...It could really use a big push in value in the sky and the ground

Backtracking (reference photos)

cave hollow park (day 1)



cave hollow park (day 2)



clark and mitchell (day 1)