Latest and Greatest

Updated Apple Painting

Here are two simi-completed apples. My teacher saw my progress and said I'm ready to use brown in my apples to make them more realistic.

Curmudgeon the Squirrel and 1st Painting

So this is Curmudgeon the Squirrel. Why I choose the name Curmudgeon, I don't know, it popped into my head as I was drawing him. To me it's ironic, because he's not curmudgeous at all. Quite cute, actually.

Here is my progroess on my Apple painting. You can see how I'm making an apple look round with different shades of red, orange and blue. Blue? Yes, there is blue on the dark side of the apple. It's interesting to learn about color theory. You don't just add black to a color to make it darker. On the light side of the apple it goes from white, yellow-white, yellow-orange, orange, orange-red, red, pure red. On the dark side of the apple it's red - dark red, and then adding in an increasing amount of a purple-blue.

10 more Apples to go!

Apple sketch - 1st painting

This is my sketch of the apples I will be painting.

Artists do (well they are supposed to) multiple sketches to "study" a painting. It's to help show the shading, focus, messaging. Sometimes you'll create a color study to see which colors will evoke the message you want or which colors will go best together. By the time you start painting you should have a very clear idea of what you're going to do. I'm finding that there's a lot of planning and preparation into painting one picture. Just when you thought artists were a bunch of spontaneous paint splashers.....

The Prodigal Son

This is from Rembrandt's "The Prodigal Son". The goal here was not to draw the whole picture but just the areas that you want the viewer to look at. When you look at Rembrandt's painting your eye immediately goes to the father's face first. This is done through contrast. There is the greatest amount of contrast around the father's face so your eye is lead there.  Then it goes to the son's feet, the father's hands and then to the older brother. Each area has to have less contrast then the next. So if you want to have the feet stand out second, you make it have less contrast than the father's face, but more than the father's hands. 

The reason behind creating focal points is so that you can tell a story. What message are you trying to get across? What feelings do you want the viewer to experience? Rembrandt wanted you to experience the father's love for his son that turned away from him. You see his face looking at his son. Then you see the son's feet and that his shoes are falling apart, he has nothing. Then you look at the hands of the father. One of the father's hands is gentle and the other is pulling the son toward him. The older brother has crossed arms and a stick as if standing back in judgement. 

Weeping Girl and Christmas Card drawing

This is The Weeping Russian Girl by Pietro Rotari. Well she turned out more "Roman" than "Russian". I had a hard time griding the picture so her face turned out longer than it should have been. In art class we're given xerox's of paintings that a lot of times are already grided out which makes it hard to measure the picture out yourself.  I'm really happy with how her hair piece turned out. It has the right shading and is pretty realistic. 

Griding - Majority of artists do not just start to draw free-hand, they do something called griding. When you grid you basically create squares over the whole picture (or a grid) and draw what is within the squares. This way you can take a large picture and make it small or vice versa. 

I have one more drawing, "The Prodigal Son" and then I'm on to painting.

For those that didn't catch it, the Christmas card I sent out was my drawing. 

After about 30 hours of drawing, I finished...

My teacher has officially signed off on it. No picture this time, because you wouldn't see any differences from the last picture. It looks pretty much the same with some "technical" changes.

I have ordered my paints and will probably start painting next February. Exciting!

I think I'm done

Well when I look at my picture I think I'm done, but my teacher would walk by and point out little things I need to do.

I started to become a little OCD when drawing the music. I found myself checking the time signature and making sure that what I was drawing was musically correct. "Should this really be a half note or should it be a quarter note". This is how art and music collide.

Those that keep up with my blog will probably be getting your own "Andrea Original" drawing soon. Keep your eye on your mailbox.

Almost done!!!

Excuse the weird angles of these pictures. If I don't angle it there is a big white glare that appears because of the flash.

So I am so close to finishing. I just need to add music to the large white piece of paper and put in my "terminal points" and I'll be done. I got to put whatever I wanted on my books and so on one I put my initials so I don't need to sign my work and the other I put my favorite book ever, Jane Eyre. 

So right now from what I can see the only thing I didn't do right is the paper on top of the paper does not look like it's bending, so I might have to go and redo it. Not looking forward to that, but it shouldn't take too long. 

It's really neat to understand how to make bends in objects. It's all about shading and putting light next to dark. You can see it in the large white piece of paper how it looks like it's bending in several places. 

Starting to take form

Well the picture is starting to take form. I still have a sheet of music that I need to shade and fill in, but for the most part I have completed most of the exercise. 

My teacher said I should be on to painting soon, so that is something to look forward to. 

Newest Edition

So last night I started putting in contrast. You can see some of it in the book to the most right of the picture. The front cover of the book has to be darker than the side closest to you. 

My teacher said it looked beautiful and he doesn't handout complements often. So I was excited about that. 

No the picture is not red... I was trying to take the picture with no flash and so I put my finger over it. This is what happens when you don't know how to turn your flash off and improvise with your finger. Kinda interesting.

So this is about 5 hours of background shading. It's highly time consuming to pencil in a dark background. You have to go over and over it so that you don't see the pencil marks (which I have not mastered). 

So I've added a little section on the page that shows interesting music I listen to. Ingrid Michaelson has such a neat tone to her voice. "Be Ok" is a really cute song if you want to look her up.  

More Progress on the Harnett

This is the original Harnett that we are drawing. Lots of details. 

Here is this week's progress on it. I went to Atlanta's Art Museum on Sunday and saw another one of Harnett's paintings. It was neat to see in person a painting of an artist I'm currently coping. 

Progress on the Harnett

Tonight I started and finished the flute. I then started work on the pipe which needs a lot of help. That will be finished next week.

I like how the flute turned out. Very realistic. Sometimes when I'm drawing I instinctively know what to do and can get in the grove. That's what happened when drawing the flute. As I started the pipe I realized that I was out of my grove and should have just stopped for the night.

I'm hungry, time to go eat some cereal.

Next Project - Books and stuff

So this is my next drawing exercise. It's a picture with books, a lamp, sheet music etc. I'm posting what I have so far because it's going to take me a while to finish it. 

The interesting thing (one of many) that I've learned through this class is that you never forsake the rules. The picture that you're copying may have a shadow on a certain part of it, but if it doesn't fall into the rules of drawing you don't draw it. So with this picture I outlined all the objects in the given picture, but from there I don't really need to look at the picture. I just follow the rules of shading. 

Block head

Here is Block Head. This was a shading exercise showing the contours of the face drawn with three different types of pencils. 

Also notice the sides of the face. This is something artists do all the time that nobody notices. On the right side of the face I wanted to highlight the bones so I put dark next to it. In between the dark I then have to put light. When you do this you then HAVE to do the opposite on the other side. Why?... Because my teacher said so. 

The dark next to light allows you to draw the viewers eyes to where you want them to go.  Dark next to dark keeps the viewer from looking in that area. So most likely your eyes will be drawn to the right side of the drawing because of the larger contrast. 

No pics, but a post

Well none of my art exercises would warrent a picture for you to look at so I just decided to write about them. The next exercise after the pear and stawberry drawing (in which my stawberries look like turnips) was to draw the "positive".

"Positive" exercise - I had a picture of a bunch of bottles of different heights and shapes and I had to draw them all on my sketch pad. Once finished drawing the bottles, I had to draw in all color changes and shawdows on the bottles. This was not a fun exercise

"Negative" drawing exercise - In this drawing we were to draw the space and not the object. In the end you end up having the object drawn, but it's because you've drawn the space around it. Does that make sense? This was also not a fun exercise and was glad my teacher moved me on quickly.

Shading exercise - We were given a face (which looks like one of the statues on Easter Island) and we had to draw the face and then put in all the shading. I really liked this exercise. I'll post this one when I'm done.

These exercises have really helped me understand what's involved in drawing and art. My teacher is contantly saying "there should be a reason behind every stroke of your brush, nothing is arbitrary". Hmmm....sounds like life.

Work in Progress

Here's the lastest drawing exercise. Still a major work in progress. Through this exercise we're learning shading, terminal points, shadows, perspective etc. Boy, I have to tell ya, this is a really hard class. There a lot of rules that you have to remember when drawing. I have a much higher appreciation for those that have mastered the arts.

First Drawing Exercise

Below is my first drawing exercise from my art class. We have three drawing pencils in which to create 15 shades of "color". So in this exercise we learned how to use those 15 different shades to make something 3-dimentional. Again, this picture looks very different in person, but you get the drift.

Art Class starting soon!

I just signed up for an art class that I'm really excited about. I've been waiting to get into this class for at least a year and it so happens to be down the street (no commuting!). The teacher was glad to hear that I've never had an art class ( for the most part) so that I don't have any bad habits that need to be broken. I really have no idea what I'm doing when I'm painting. I'll start off drawing with a pencil until he decides I'm ready to move on. If you want to see what his students do you can go to his website, www.oldworldart.net.