Lilies and Aquatic Predators

A couple of weeks ago I got some balsa wood. Balsa is a very light, soft wood, very easy to work with unless you want something with more weight, or if you want to work against the grain (which makes balsa wood splinter). I cut off some rectangles and squares and sealed some of them. Today I started painting them using acrylic paints and various concentrations of glaze medium for different effects. I mostly used shades of turquoise.

One of them I didn’t seal and carved the wood against the grain (the tree square, in the corner):

WiPs (photo taken on my cat’s favourite chair, as you can probably tell):

WiP shot of an aquatic piece – ocean and what might be a large fish, or perhaps a squid:

And here it is, finished:

Here is the other piece I finished, which reminds me of a lily pond:

I really like these two, and the aquatic one in particular. I might work on more of these using wood shavings!

Painting – Week 3

This week’s painting class was quite fun. We are now working with acrylics, and I love using my Jo Sonja collection every chance I get! We had to paint a still life again – the wooden vase/bottle thing, a different mask, a fruit basket and a sun hat at the back, spread on a purple cloth:

Not that inspiring a subject (to me), but it was made interesting by the use of impasto (gel medium). I’d never used this before. It’s like a very thick, white, sticky paste that can be diluted or mixed with paint, or used as it is and then painted over. Basically it provides texture, and brings 3D effects to an otherwise flat medium. When mixed with a colour, it makes the colour look as though it’s mixed with white (unsurprisingly…).

I worked with it using the brushes as well as a palette knife. I’m sure you can get really interesting effects by using other tools – things like chicken wire, for example. It’d also be interesting to see if you could embed things into it (beads, glass eyes, etc).

Here is my WIP:

We’re allocating a couple of weeks to this. Next week I’m going to add more detail to this canvas, like shading and extra bits of colour.

We’re also supposed to start thinking about our “major work” – what we’ll be working on for the rest of the term. I can’t decide between a more abstract charcoal piece (or a series of them), a watercolour cityscape (I was thinking of painting a wet road – this would have ample opportunity for bleeds), or something precise and minute in acrylic. Hmmm.

Painting – Week 2

Tonight we played around with watercolour. Not my favourite medium, although you can get some really cool effects with it. You can sponge it, bleed it, and even use sandpaper on the finished product, if your paper is sturdy enough. We had to paint a still life scene – thankfully, no fruit or wine bottles:

Here is my watercolour WIP (I am apparently really slow! other people in the class got to do a couple in the time it took me to do this):

I don’t like the top mask. I love masks, but that top one was just too garish and detailed for a watercolour painting. It would probably work better as a detail in an oil painting.

Details:

I added a bit more detail at home:

Details:

I’m really pleased with the feathered mask and the bowling pins. But there’s too much wasted space on my paper, and I don’t think a background would work all that well. I’m going to keep experimenting with watercolour, perhaps I’ll try something a bit more abstract – an abstract cityscape comes to mind. But I really like how well it expresses light/shadow, and I like layering/bleeding it.

Also, because this post is not picture-heavy enough, here are some pics of the College:

Hogwarts gets a Catholic makeover, much?

The photos turned out surprisingly well, considering the camera (my little compact Ixus) and the time of day (night).

Enrolled!

I finally did it – I enrolled in two art courses at Sydney Community College. I decided to start with two basic courses, to refresh my visual memory and fill in gaps, etc. They’re both seven-week courses, Monday and Tuesday, 2.5h per session. It’s going to be an intense seven weeks, but maybe that’s exactly what I need.

The two courses I enrolled in are Drawing for Beginners and Fundamentals of Painting. I start in a couple of weeks’ time, eep! This is exciting, and a little scary. (What if I’m crap? What if the courses are not that good? What if I can’t handle night classes twice a week plus homework, while working full-time plus a bit of freelance, and also trying to write, play games and have a bit of a life?) But definitely more exciting than scary, as it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long, long time!

Squee!

Finished!

More pics – finished Phoenix and details.

Phoenix-shaped explosion

I’m painting something for dad…started about a week ago, but didn’t take photos of the different stages. Basically it’s a square canvas, about 30cm x 30cm, which I covered in neutral-coloured paint (pale grey-brown, purposely not well-blended). Then I mixed a shade of blue I liked, put it on a plastic sheet, folded it in half to obtain a Rorschach-type effect, then pressed the paint onto the canvas. I then proceeded to torture it to my heart’s content – splashing coloured water all over it, using dry brushes, applying salt crystals of different sizes to it, etc. I let it dry for a while, and then I started to work on he final details – the head, which is going to be quite well-defined and flat, and the wing and tail tips. The idea is that I wanted a textured painting, but with contrast in some areas. The only thing left now I think is to make sure the sides of the canvas look okay (as it’s not meant to be framed), and I’m also thinking of dry-brushing a tiny bit of light green and gold onto the tail.

Still in love with macro shots:

I’ll take some more pics once it’s finished.