Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Figure painting



So I've been taking Figure Painting at the school now for five weeks. Last homework assignment was a master copy, our choice of reference as long as it was full figure. I chose to work from Caravaggio's "Boy with a Ram" Obviously rendering after Caravaggio on an 18x24 is quite the challenge, but it was a lot of fun getting to spend more then 8 hours on a figurative piece. On the other hand, when you really look at the reference for 20 hours you start realizing what a genius Caravaggio was. The subtleties and hue variations this man had, in a time where paints did not come on tubes in every color imagenable, is truly amazing. I think Ill try copying another one of his paintings in... lets say 20 years and see how much closer I'll be!

This second image is a painting from model in class, about 8 hours on this one. 12x16 canvas board. Face turned out nice, need to work some more color in there.



Another painting done in class, tried working a bit losser with some elements. 5 hours on this one.



Third in class painting, thats it for midterms :)


Saturday, February 14, 2009

Still life hw. - Composition and painting

First homework assignment for my composition and painting class. "One non-traditional still life of one or more somewhat mundane and overlooked objects. Make an interesting composition, the use of shadow shapes and positive/negative spaces can aid you in the overall interest of compositional abstract shapes." Basically create something interesting through creative composition, not exciting objects.

Decided to string up my objects with floss and then paint them as if they were hovering mid-air. The final composition turned out pretty bad, the empty area to the left completely kills the painting. On the pluss side my brushwork and color mixing are slowly improving, and I got to try out an interesting wider format. Next homework will be a cityspace/landscape and looks to be very interesting.








In-class composition:


Photoshop Composition


Digital Imaging Class homework, we had to create a composition in photoshop from 10 different pictures or more. Threw together this little naval battle scene. The reference material i found decided more then I did, but it all sort of came together in the end.