Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Memory Lane

I ran across this photo of a model painting I did several months ago. Maybe a year ago? I kinda like it.


Tuesday, July 23, 2013

blue goblet, green book, yellow string

Does anyone use the word goblet anymore? This blue goblet is one of a set used by my family for Sunday dinners as I was growing up. I saved it from a trip to the D.I. a few weeks ago and decided to memorialize it in paint, along with my mom's french dictionary and a bright red book.


From this assignment I learned that more saturated colors (brighter, less gray) make the object come forward and duller/gray colors recede. The reflected light from the books onto the sheet (above the green book and to the left of the red/green stack) was originally more saturated, but those folds were competing with the books, appearing closer to the viewer. Jeff pointed this out to me and I dimmed the colors down a bit. The light shining through the goblet has more color than I originally noticed too.

After taking a pic of it on my easel, I moved the painting under a skylight in Jeff's studio and am impressed with how much better the colors look in natural light! My camera phone isn't very high resolution either but more light helped the definition. 

finished painting photographed on my phone under a skylight

finished painting photographed on my phone in the darker, artificially lit studio

When I first painted the bricks in the background of the painting, Jeff thought they looked a little off. He suggested that set a string at eye level where the bricks' vanishing point would be, and use the string as a guide to see if I drew the angles of the bricks correctly. It sounded like a difficult task at first, but Jeff showed me where he thought the vanishing point would be and I set up the string...




I was surprised and impressed to discover that Jeff's vanishing point was spot on, and that my angles were basically correct! I just used a ruler to make the lines straighter, which helped the bricks feel more solid.

Great lesson in perspective! Way to go, Jeff!




Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Hey there, Roman guy.

Here's the final picture of my first color painting at the Hein Academy, which I finished about a month ago. It's not perfect but Jeff mercifully allowed me to move on to the next assignment. One thing I could have done better is creating more defined planes of color in areas, such as the beard, to give it more form.