Head Painting: Week 6

This week we started branching out to a fuller pallete.  The first painting was with black, white, cad red, yellow ochre, alizarin crimson, and cad yellow.  The second painting was with those same colors but also with some phthalo green and ultramarine blue.

We also finally did some paintings with COOL LIGHT!  I mean, I like warm light as much as the next guy, but for some reason cool light makes more instinctive sense to me-- it's easier.  And, consequently, these two paintings turned out be be my favorites!

Head Painting: Week 5

Recent news:  I had a piece accepted to BYU's Annual Figure Drawing Show! :)  I'm super excited about it because it's my last one before I graduate, and this makes three years in a row.  There are a TON of awesome pieces in the show so I highly recommend that you check it out.  It will be on the 4th floor of the HFAC from now through February 27 (I think).

Anyway, here is another painting!  I need to start getting to class earlier before the room fills up so I don't get stuck doing profiles every week.  But I'm pretty happy with how this one turned out.  Once again we were using the Zorn palette (black, white, cad red, and yellow ochre).  Also this model had some fun hair. :)

Head Painting: Week 4

This week we started using the "Zorn" palette which is: white, black, a warm red, and yellow ochre.  Thankfully it wasn't as tricky as I thought it would be to get the shadows to look cool with such a warm palette.

The first painting I did this week did NOT turn out.  As Brother Barrett said-- all the problems originated from not getting my drawing (the proportions and features of the face) right before I kept going.  Oh well! That's called learning I guess.  And thankfully the next painting (the one below) was much better in my opinion.

Pretty cool to think that his "blue" shirt is actually just black and white mixed together!  Good ol' relativity. :)

Head Painting: Week 3

This week in painting we actually had some male models! That's always a fun change of pace.  I did them in pretty different styles-- I'm still trying to figure out what I like and what works best for me.

For this one I tried to keep the shadow side really simple and do all the modeling in the light.  Basically I was trying to turn my painting into a figure drawing as much as possible. :)

The Prodigal Blogger Returns! (aka: Head Painting Weeks 1 and 2)

Hello interwebs!  Long time no see, eh?  Well I'm actually taking an art class again (the last coupld semesters I was focusing on finishing my minors and didn't take any art classes). So I am actually going to start posting art again! :)

This semester I am taking my VERY LAST art class at BYU.  Once I finish this class I am officially done with my Illustration major.  I'm glad that I'm ending with this class (although, as you can guess, I would have loved a figure drawing class too), because I wanted to get more solid at painting before I left school.  The class is called "Painting the Human Head" which sounds kind of funny.  But portrait painting is something I've always wanted to learn and be good at-- so it's great!  I am taking it from Bob Barrett (have I ever taken a class from anyone else?) and so far I like it a lot.


These images are from the first two weeks of class.  The first one (yikes) was basically all about trying to remember how the heck oil painting works at all.  It was a little rough, but since it's been over a year since my last time doing oils I didn't feel too bad.

In the next one I focused on increasing contrast in the lights and darks (since I felt like this was a weakness with the first painting).

The third painting is where I decided to try playing with color more (and I reigned in my shadows to a more realistic level).  I had slightly less time on this one, so the shapes aren't as smooth.  But I seem to be improving with each painting-- so hopefully this trend continues!

Illustration 3: Final

"It's so subLIME!"  My husband was helping inspire me while I worked on my final painting by coming up with lots of lime-related puns.  This painting was an editorial illustration of an article about the lime shortage.  Apparently lime prices have skyrocketed as Mexican tree disease, drug cartels, and bad weather have caused a shortage. (you learn something new every day!)  As Andy said "these sorts of articles are really putting Mexico in the LIMElight, aren't they?" :)  Anyway, this was my idea of how to convey the main points of that article in an illustration!

Illustration 3: In-class work

Hello!  Here are some of the in-class and other assignments that we have done in my acrylic painting class.  We had a lot of fun trying new things in class and keeping ourselves creative.

This assignment involved using visual metaphors.  I was working on using light washes to give it a dusty look.

I tried something new and used gold foil to emphasize the "halo" aspect of the lasso!

This was our very first assignment in this class-- I was just trying to get the hand of acrylics.  I realized during this piece that I needed to buy some much smaller brushes (those paper lines are thin!).

This was an in-class project.  We were working off very old photographs and using layers of washes.

We experimented with collage in class too!  It was fun creating different patterns and colors and putting them all together.

We used fashion photos and film stills to create color palettes and composition studies.

I forgot my palette the day we did the color studies so I used a piece of watercolor paper.  It ended up looking like art itself!