term 1: (sorry for all the gross glare!! eww)
a stencil project where we picked a color scheme (blue and yellow-orange, orange, red-orange, or something like that. and then we could use black and white. hmm i'm not sure how the pink and red got there). i think i painted this right after hearing "did i step on your trumpet" by the danielson famile. also, one of the stencils is from my little music-box toy trumpet which plays "mary had a little lamb." other stencils were numbers and letters from refrigerator magnets, and stuff i drew, arrows, hearts. i love this painting. it needs some touch up work in a few spots, but that will be easy as 1, 2, 3, 4.
this one is supposed to be based on charles burchfield's paintings. he was an american regionalist painter from ohio, working from 1915-1967. it was interesting to read about him and look at how his style of painting changed over the years. some of it is so weird and cool. i love this painting, i wish i had an empty wall to put it on. it also makes me think of one of my favorite songs by the decemberists, engine driver, singing about power lines. that song also makes me think of buster keaton's film, "the general", probably cuz of the trains, duh, and also the mood, and maybe the accordion. buster keaton is so cool. i still want to go see the train that's in the river at cottage grove, oregon.
this was a project we did that had to do with a play that was at pcc last year. the play was the children's hour by lillian hellman. we made collages of images that had to do with the play. i like the colors in this painting, and it was a challenge to paint, but i don't know that i'd actually want it on my wall or anything. it was cool though, because our paintings were up in the foyer of the theatre, and everyone saw them. also my mom and i saw the play on the night when they had sign language interpretation. it made the whole thing more enjoyable and interesting, and made me want to learn sign language.i also had a painting of georgia o'keefe from this term (it's somewhere in the basement) and a painting of a gourd i grew once, and it was not good, i knew i never wanted it on my wall or wanted to finish it, so i painted over it to save money on wood.
term 2:
this is my grandma. well, there's a picture of her taken when she was 16, and i painted from that. it's really hard to paint people. her expression still isn't right, and she looks too plastic, but i do like this painting, and i might continue working on it, and anyone in my family who sees it will know who she is. this was painted by making our blacks and greys by mixing just the primary colors- red, blue, yellow, with white. it's a good excercise.
still lifes. sigh. well, i'm amazed at how well this shell turned out. i wasn't that interested in painting it. i think it's not really finished, but i don't know that i'll ever finish it. the hardest thing was making it look 3-d and getting all the angles right. i think it looks better in digital photo form, haha.
slug!!! eww, glare. this is called a "caterpillar slug". (the image is from an old national geographic). the assignment was to make the image into four sections and paint them with different styles of mark-making. (i did cross hatching, dabs, circles, and blurry strokes) and it was a fun project, and the colors were fun to paint. it was so cool to see what everyone else in the class painted as well.
well, we have a couple paintings left this term, so that's exciting. i've really enjoyed my painting classes. it's difficult sometimes, but fun to learn how to mix colors and paint things in a believable way. oh, i should say, these are all on wood panels, most are 24in x30in, (annoying to carry on the bus).
