Overall Thoughts

It’s been about a month since I worked on the last assignment. I needed the time to work on some other personal projects and work. One thing I noticed during this time is that mentally, getting back into painting feels harder when you take so much time off. So I told myself that I would ABSOLUTELY work on the next assignment this weekend, come hell or high water, before that mental block grows bigger. It’s okay to take some time off from painting, but not so long that you feel “afraid to get on the horse again.”

The biggest issue was that each painting session for me takes 7-9 hours and since I like to try to get a lot of things done in the few weeks before the end of the year, 7-9 hours in one day felt like too much. Luckily (?) this time, I actually got through the ENTIRE painting session–including setup, cleanup and using up leftover paint on sketchbook practice–in 5 hours (!!)

Part of that was not taking TOO much time trying out EVERY color combination. Because mixing colors takes the longest time. I think I’ve also increased my control at doing edges, so that helps.

https://youtu.be/n74XrFvgE0U

Total time spent:

• Day 1 setup, tracing the black and white image: 12:19pm to about 12:30, so just 10 minutes or so.
• Day 2 painting session: 9:22am to 2:25ish pm = 5 hours

If I were to start this painting over right now, what would I do differently?

• Take another look at the color of the apple, I think it might be too bright.
• Just get started and stop overthinking it!
• Probably didn’t need to draw all those lines on the pot. Just focus on the shape of th

Day 1

• I spent 12/24 morning working on the transfer for the photo to paint, but then delayed the actual painting because I had some things to do, and by the time I was done, the sun was setting and I wanted to do the painting in natural light so I get the right colors.

Day 2

• Started with shadows, but it was a bit tricky figuring out which was extreme and which was moderate shadow. Especially the pot.
• I admit I might’ve “cheated” by checking my old assignment from Block 1, which uses the same photo, only in black and white.
• Didn’t take as long as I usually do mixing colors, I tended to go with about 2 color mixes (I think 2-3 is the sweet spot, 4 is a bit much, and the instructors say more than 4 defeats the purpose, because at that point you don’t know which colors are contributing what to your mix).
• I saved time by not testing everything, or using the swatch things that I made last time. Is that considered cutting corners?
  • Perhaps, but then again, sometimes it can be helpful to do the opposite of what you’ve been doing, and what I was doing before was taking far too long playing with every last detail.
  • So I think it was a good experiment at least to try to make myself work faster this time. We’ll see what the instructors say when they see the final product!
• Colors used:
  • Pot = eng red + schev yellow
  • Apple = crimson + schev yellow
  • Cylinder = schev yellow + eng red
  • Background = burnt umber + white + crimson
  • Table = eng red + white + yellow green
• I also used my leftover paint to start an abstract painting based on a black and white image from a poster book.
  • The goal is to not necessarily color it true-to-life, but to focus on noticing values and even if the colors aren’t quite right (green or blue instead of peach for skin), the only point is to get the values more accurate. A la Vincent Van Gogh, a bit…
• Looks pretty terrible right now, especially since the initial sketch is definitely off, and the colors aren’t finished, but I’ll just count it as practice and try for incremental improvement:

Final Submission

This is the final painting I submitted for grading:

I submitted the assignment at around 3:20pm on 12/25/22 (yep, Christmas day), and got a response at 9:23am 12/26. (I was surprised they were so fast on the holiday week)

My Questions & Instructor Feedback

• I was right. That apple color was definitely off. I definitely felt worse about it after sleeping on it, so going back to need to spend more time working on color mixing.
• The instructor said the apple’s value was too dark. I thought she’d say it was too crimson/vivid/bright/(whatever the word is for “too red”). Will have to noodle on this.
• She also mentioned that the hue for the pot and the value of the cylinder was slightly off.
• Note to self: Slow down in the early stages and really pay attention, I can always speed up later.
• Also, the instructor said the shadow to the left of the pot was incorrect. I am checking with her on that because it was correct back in B1A13 for the black and white version of this image, so I was curious why it’s changed 🙂

Lesson Video Notes

• There was no new lesson video for this assignment, just a note on continuing to use what we’ve already learned.

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