We finished up the lettering seminar, and I'm pretty happy with how my projects turned out. One of them has yet to be finished, but once I find the time to do so, it shouldn't take too long. We got to pick our own projects this year, so I decided to do one on glass. I painted on the back of the glass, so did all the outlining first, then the black lining, then filled in with gold. It was exponentially more difficult than I was expecting. But in the end, I'm pretty happy with it:
After that we moved on to painting stone and rock formations. This was a nice change from the exactness of sign painting, allowing us to loosen up a lot and slop some paint around...although my tendency is still to be too neat and tight. I am always reminding myself to loosen up and let go! The first one is about 4x8', the second about 4x5'.
After that came brushed foliage. For last year's foliage project, we used foam stamps and cut foam rollers. This year it's all brushes to create that "painterly" look. We each did the same picture for our first "practice" project. Then we each picked our own project to finish out the week. This was a hard week for me. I definitely think I'm getting better, but foliage is a tricky thing. It's a delicate balance of making loose, natural shapes (both of the leaves themselves and of the clusters), while making a conscious effort to recreate the rendering. An odd mixture of loose brushwork and specific placement. In the end, I'm fairly happy with my projects, but it was a struggle to get there. I think this was a lesson for me in focusing on making a reasonable facsimile of the rendering...and letting go of the idea that it will be an exact reproduction. Basically I shouldn't be such a stinking perfectionist.
In the mean time, Rachel's been drilling us in drawing faces. Lots and lots of faces. Parts of faces and perspective of faces and baby faces and male faces and female faces.....oy. It's definitely a skill I'd like to perfect, but I'm a LONG ways off. At one point I was feeling fairly confident in my drawings of male faces, so I decided to make an attempt at a female face....and instead produced a disturbing likeness of Michael Jackson. But they're improving and are starting to look like passable human beings. This coming week may involve more large-scale drawings, so I'll post a group of drawings soon.
But the REAL fun lately was this past week. Julie flew out on the 20th and left early this morning. It was awesome! Poor Julie was sick most of the time, though...a stomach bug earlier in the week and strep throat later on! But she's a trooper and we still had a lot of fun. She was originally supposed to stay through the 30th, but she got an assignment from work to go to Nashville, so she left a bit early.
Scot came up for Thanksgiving weekend, so we all enjoyed a huge, albeit non-traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Deep dish Chicago style pizza, spinach-artichoke dip, french onion dip, and apple pie with a cheddar cheese crust...all homemade! Oh, and something that I think should become a yearly tradition: mimosas while we cooked. I think I'm still full.
On Friday the three of us ventured down to NYC to be tourists for the day. We took the train from Middletown (40 minute drive South of here), wandered through Central Park for a little while, and then had lunch at a cafe on Madison Ave right near the museum (same place that Mom and Dad and I went last year). We were surprised to see so many leaves on the trees still! Around here they're completely bare.
After lunch we walked over to the Met, paid considerably less than the "suggested" admission price, and admired the art for a few hours.
Advisory: I'm going to geek out a little bit here. Not interested in hearing my over-excited commentary on some old-ass artwork? Feel free to skip the text and just look at the pictures. I won't tell...
I'm a sucker for the Greek and Roman section. Especially the carvings and statues. And something about the ones that are broken or have missing sections for some reason are more appealing to me than the ones that are entirely intact. Not only is the story behind them intriguing (I imagine there are some fascinating tales behind a piece's injuries), but somehow I think they're visually more stunning. Maybe I'm crazy. But I can't help it...
I always find myself staring in utter disbelief at these paintings, so it was fun to be able to hold my camera up close and get some detail shots:
JMW Turner:
Jean-Leon Gerome:
Mom and I both had to pry our jaws off the floor when we first saw this one last year, and I was eager to take a few photos during this visit. It's not a large painting, perhaps a little less than life-size. But the sheer perfection of this man's face leaves me speechless. To say it's photo-real is selling it short. It's better than a photo...yet the picture as a whole still appears painterly. Brilliant.
I've also discovered that I really love Camille Pissarro. This one in particular:
Okay...I'm done geeking out. Promise. I definitely feel more inspired to pursue my own painting outside of school/work after looking at those. Can you tell I thoroughly enjoyed myself?
After the museum, we made our way down to the Zoo in Central Park. We didn't really care to go into the zoo, but Julie has an obsession with penny machines....the kind where you crank a knob and the machine presses the penny into an oval with a new image. She has some sort of inherent ability to blindly locate these machines, apparently, and she quickly made a b-line to get her souvenirs :)
And from there, we continued to walk around the city, admiring the Christmas window displays, lights, etc. We wanted to see the tree in Rockefeller Square, but apparently they aren't lighting it up until Tuesday night. Bummer! We saw plenty of lights (and crowds) in Times Square. And after a while got tired and called it a day.
Scot and I drove Julie to the airport at 5 am this morning (oy!). Sad to see her go, but I get to see her and the whole family in just a few weeks!
And that....is the end of a ginormous post.
