Thursday, March 12, 2015

Back to School Part 2

More work in progress. I hope to finish this one at my next oil painting class. This is my attempt at another urban landscape, 16" X 20", water mixable oil paint on stretched canvas. The teacher is really helping me focus on values, dark and light, to make the scene interesting and improve my painting techniques.   I had started this painting a while ago, took a break while I worked on the big bridge painting (previous post) and have been working on it again now. The mounted police were in front of Veterans Park in downtown Manchester.  I don't have a title yet for this painting.

This was lesson 4, a couple of weeks ago.  My heart is not in working on still life paintings, but it is good exercise.  This was an example of metal and reflections. I worked in the same oil paints on a canvas board, 9" x 12".   The urban painting above was worked on for Lessons 5 and 6, plus I started a new painting (below).

As I was thinking about what to bring to class for Lesson 6, I cropped a photo from Pittsburg, NH of the First Connecticut Lake.  I bought a 9" x 12" Ampersand panel from the school store to try out.  I wasn't too happy with it as the oil paint really seems to smear, but I'll keep at it for a while. I did my initial sketch as a kind of negative painting, putting the design in between the birch trees. I'll keep working on this one for a while. The birch trees are not really white, so I'll be introducing some more subtle colors into them.

In between classes, I made color charts with my oil paints. I had done that with my acrylic paints when I was studying acrylic painting.  I found this very helpful.  I do not have really good color vision (I roll my eyes when I hear someone say they see "green" or "purple" in something that looks white to me).  Having the color charts with the mixes is very helpful. These are a bit tedious to make up, but worthwhile. I'll take some photos and post them next time.


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