Acrylic Painting: Much More than Just Drawing with Color3 April 2013

Right before Spring break about two weeks ago, my Foundation Drawing class transitioned from drawing into painting, as I’ve alluded to in a few of my posts. We’ve been only doing still lifes of food or glassware in class as exercises, and our two out-of-class painting assignments so far have been to do a nightscape and then to do a nightscape where we paint our reflection in a window that still allows one to see the outside at the same time. Here are my still lifes that I’ve painted in class:

This still life of cakes and cupcakes is definitely my worst effort, and I think I did a terrible job. It was extremely difficult to communicate the texture of the cake, and to do shading with the painting. It was one of my very first attempts, but it was quite bad.

I like this still life much better. I like the colors that I used in the honeydew melon, plus the composition is much more interesting. I don’t pretend that this looks realistic at all, but that is not really my intent in the painting. I’m more interested in presenting interesting shape relationships along with exciting color.

I really like this still life too, especially its composition. The watermelon slices look kind of weightless and as if they’re floating, but that’s ok. I really like the red/pink color of the watermelon flesh as well as the deep green of the rind, and I think the tablecloth, whose hue I exaggerated from what it looks like in real life to become this baby blue color, complements the greens and reds nicely.

These are the sketches and final painting I made for my nightscape:

This is my favorite still life that I’ve done so far. I love the drama of the black background against the white, and I like the composition, with the glass, the only object in the entire painting, pushed all the way over to the left. I definitely thought of Degas’s “Woman with Chrysanthemums” when I was painting it, because it has a similar composition. Although while Degas does put flowers in the center of his composition, I chose to leave mine empty. And I’m glad I did, because it gives this beautiful wine glass center stage. The painting is very simple in terms of color and composition, but the shadow that the light on the

I wasn’t totally happy with this final painting because it seemed too decorative to me. It looked too much like a wallpaper pattern. Our next assignment is to draw a landscape from a great height above the ground. I’m

not sure what I will do yet, and I’m pretty sick of doing landscapes, but hopefully I’ll be able to find something.