Intermediate Oil Paint 2011

For all of my readers who may not have known, I am currently an art student, with a concentration in Painting and Drawing. This previous semester I took Drawing 3, which I have posted many pictures from, and Intermediate Oils, which I haven't shared anything from yet. Well Intermediate oils definitely kicked my butt, but I learned so much in the process and I am finally willing to show my work to the world.

*Please note I am still a student, and therefore nothing here is 'perfect'-- I'm still learning after all.

Our first assignment was a still life set up of only white things. The one I did was white paper tacked to the wall. The idea was to learn about color and how warms come forward and cools go back and about intensities and such. My teacher absolutely loved this painting and it was the one that reassured for me that I am meant to be a painter.

Staying along the lines of the white objects, our next was to create an environment in a box and spray paint the whole thing white, then paint from it using a color scheme we found in an art magazine. I really like this painting, my teacher not so much, and I understand why. The colors are cool though :)

The second half of the semester was working from the figure. I was scared to death when this started, and I still do not like figure work, but I think my end results were pretty good. I wish I could take what I learned from that first project about color and intensity and apply it better to works like this. Maybe I'm just scared, because why would a blue cloth have purple in it? But that is something I plan to work on next year in advanced.

Our final assignment was a life size self portrait, and it was primarily out of class work. Everyone pretty much did themselves in 'real' poses, but I knew I wanted to push my self, something I had been doing all semester. So I decided to do myself, looking in the mirror, with the mirror reflecting my mind AKA "Get me out of here!" This thing has been torture from the start. It had it's highs and lows and very lows than somewhat highs and well I finally finished it. I don't think it's my best work, and there are still things I'd like to fix, but I'm out of time and patience, so it's the best it's going to be. Once again, I want to apply my color knowledge more, but it's so hard! Overall I think I did a pretty good job and looking back, I never could have painted this a year ago.

Oh and sorry the photo is so small. It doesn't do much justice to the final piece, which is 7ft tall by 5ft wide. (if you click it gets bigger)

So now you've seen my art. What do you think? Where should I go next? Advanced painting is next year, and that's when we finally get to do whatever we want. It's kinda scary really, because I have ideas, but they're all with the figure, something I still dislike. Maybe someday the figure I will just get along!

~Lisa