College Paintings

This will be where I post all of the art works made in my painting classes at Grand View. Though I am drawing oriented, I think it is important to practice a range of skills. Throughout my time in my painting classes I have learned how to mix paint, create interesting compositions, and how to control the media.

Acrylic Paint. This was my first drawing in Beginners Painting my Fall semester of sophomore year. We were required to set up a still life and to photograph it in an interesting way and then paint it. As this was my first college level painting class, I was a bit intimidated. I had never practiced much with the media so it was a challenge to get used to. However, I am somewhat pleased with how it turned out.

Acrylic paint. For this painting we were required to photograph a still life of fruit. We were then required to paint half of this in a gray scale and the other in a realistic color scheme. I enjoyed this process and the prompt. I noticed the others in my class were dividing the halves horizontal or vertically so I wanted to stand out and do something different. I am glad I did it like this because before staring I experimented with the orientation of the divide and did not find the others to look very well with the composition. Painting the banana was my favorite part of the piece.

Acrylic paint. For this project we had to paint a single object in repetition. I chose buttons because I liked the shape and how they looked in different perspective. As for the color scheme we had to choose either a dominate cool or warm ton pallet with accents of the opposite color scheme. I chose a majority cool toned with accents of warm. I wanted to create a sense of light coming from one of the buttons and was very pleased with the idea. It was not until the last day of working on this that I added the stars, effectively making this painting whimsical and ridiculous. As goofy as this painting is, I am very happy with how it turned out. I was able to create a work that was in my own personal style (as encouraged) and I enjoyed the process very much.

Oil on canvas (5"x5"). Although this is a painting, this piece was completed in my Intermediate Drawing class. The prompt for this project was to take a risk in some way. I interpreted this as using a media that I had never explored before. Besides trying to use oils (and failing) when I was in 5th grade, I have never touch this kind of paint until now. I enjoyed working with it and used linseed oil to thin out the paint and I tried to take advantage of how slowly the paint dries. This was a learning project for me so next time, when I'm more comfortable with the material, I hope to make a larger piece.