A New Shade (2)

This week, I decided to work on something that had burdened me the most as an artist: colors and shading.  I would consistently waste entire tubes of paint trying to lighten a shade, for a color that only occurred in three specks on a painting. To work on color mixing and shading, you need to have a very diverse color scheme to base off.  But what is relatively colorful and easier to paint?  This marked the beginning of my weekly adventure: find a cool picture.  

Day 1 (2/18): Painting the Blues 

Naturally, this meant choose a painting with vibrant colors and some contrast.  So I chose this:

A pretty rocky island

This photo had lots of blue and green colors, which both involve a lot of mixing with both hues and tints, something with dire need of improvement.  If I can't properly make colors, how will I paint?  So immediately, I printed the photo out, and designed its proportions onto the larger canvas.  Hours were spent yelling at a crooked square, or an annoying pencil smudge, but eventually I realized I was just going to paint over it anyway.

"No one's going to see this anyway, right?"

Now, onto the actual painting.  I decided to work background to foreground, starting with the sky.  Immediately I made questionable color choices and mixing, but in the end, it all got corrected.  I rushed through because I wanted to seem accomplished, and I'll be honest, that's a pretty stupid mistake. 

A shaky .gif of the creation of the sky. On one of the frames, you can say hi to the creator himself!

After giving up hope to the point I used a paint knife to scrape off layers, (a desperate failure) I decided just to work on the sea.  I had actually used more turquoises before (What? It looks nice!), and even though I was working from background to foreground, I decided to mess up the order.  Unfortunately, at 11:00 PM at night, you become too tired for documentation, at least with oils, you don't need to clean up right away.  Oil isn't known for drying, and that is a huge double-edged sword for a mess waiting to happen.  Anyway, onto the next day.

Day 2 (2/19): Land Ho!

Disclaimer: I did not create the sea in 10-15 seconds, as the .gif shows

Like I said, at 11 PM, people are far from their peak, unless they're a zombie, something I might become during freshman year.  But Sunday was an absolute... success?  Like I said, I thought the sea turned out well, and that the gradual move to the turquoise coast was a highlight.  I then decided, the cloud was made, the sea was at a straight level, what is to keep me from painting the island?  I got a lot of it done, but my shades were way off, as light lime meadows conflicted with... teal?  How do you get teal on a tree covered island?! 

No idea why this .gif just stops.  I gave it THREE hours (of upload time)

Frustration aside, the island was in the right shape, a round end, a pointy end, dark hilltops, light meadows near the coast, etc.  And I even shaded the cloud, the comfortable blanket over the island.  For someone who couldn't even paint one color the first day, I felt pretty achieved. 

I left the painting mostly like that during the weekdays, but I did come back and make minor edits now and then, mostly after I came back home.  On Friday, the sky's true color started to form, as I decided to just add small globs of blue, giving the sky less of a gray, and more of a blue.  By Friday, I had pretty much finished my painting, with a few additions on Saturday.  Anyway, take it away to Sunday!

Days 3-9 Monday-Sunday (2/20-26)

Because GIF makers run slower than my mile time, I just ran a HUGE mega-gif.  The lighting can get really bad, because sunlight isn't always available for six straight days. 

IT'S THE MEGA.GIF!  My Week: Greatest Pics

You made it through all 300< slides of the MEGA.gif!  Internet about to crash?  No? Me neither, but my computer gave me 10 error messages before having a seizure on Finder. Isn't that just awesome, more flashing.  Marginal edits were made and in the end, the result of nine days brought this:

Hi!  I look pretty decent for someone who hasn't taken an art class since elementary!

Amazing?  No way, but if you look at the composite:

Painting overlaid the original photo

Now that the details are outlined, let's go over our adventure.  

Lessons Learned

Many things have been learned through my painting adventure.  Instead of writing a whole narrative essay, I feel like they could be summed up in bullet points.


1. Color

My focus was on color mixing, so I hope I learned something about it, and sure enough, I improved.  The dark greens that represent the two hills are not distinct, but they are pretty close.  Looking back, the ocean could be a little darker, but the coast seems to be solid. Also that strip (peninsula) is awkward, it blended in a little with the coast.  Even though I thought that color mixing and blending was my main concern, it seemed like other concerns arose.  In order of my success color matching in major objects, from perfect to pathetic, I'd go with:

1. Cloud (Blending on the right could be calmer however)
2. (Close Second) Ocean (darker ripples, coast is good)
3. Sky (Managed to pull it off)
4. Island (Not enough lighter tones, dark blends good)

So why did the island fail in my eyes?  Frantically guessing the perfect shade definitely absorbed the next guess, compounding into an unknown, but definitely not a light green.  You like texture?  The rocky island had texture, rocks, trees, the sky?  The result of too much mixing, especially on week old paint.

2. Proportion

I don't blame my sketch for this one, despite yelling at it so much.  But the first noticeable difference is how the hill isn't that steep, or that tall, or that low.  The ocean seems to be a little lower than it is supposed to be, but that isn't a big deal.  Noticing the faded painting overlap the sky, I would give myself at best a 60% success rate at painting the peaks,  That's terrible, but inside the painting without the source, it would look normal.  The valleys of the peaks don't have enough depth, looking all like one misshapen hill in the background. 

3. Conservation

Whoever said that haste makes waste, preach!  Through mixing, blending, and the repeating 10,000 times, I'm pretty sure I used at least a 1/4 pound of paint.  I've already run out of two out of six colors (Easy to guess which two), and I'm not sure if I will use turquoise and aqua in the next week.   Either way, I am burning through paint.  It dawned around Friday, or even Thursday when I was working: mixing wouldn't be so hard if so many things weren't being mixed at once.  What I mean was I was painting my palette more than my actual painting.  How productive! 

So by now, you could have picked up a contradiction, or hyperbole, but that's really how things went sometimes, and failed at other times.  But no matter what, there was a takeaway.  Clouds are really nice to blend in with the sky, and land is not, unless you want a olive green haze.  But the overarching theme?  Moderation.

Moderation?  But why, when you have learned how to slant a hill, or give a cloud some transparency?  Because moderation needs to be used everywhere.  Do what you need, and if you need a little more, make sure its because you've actually completely run out, and not because it would make you feel better.  If the paintbrush doesn't get paint after a good swipe over the puddle, refill.  Use all of a color, and then make a new color if needed.  Just don't make turquoise, than realize you need sky blue, and then need turquoise again, to the point where you are making sky blue off a tissue.  Moderation, do only what needs to be done, and nothing more.  I think this really hit me personally too, as I also deal with issues of going over the top.  I am in no way a perfectionist, yet sometimes I do a lot more than I need to do to get something done.  After all, all these troubles could have been prevented by moderation.  Just a thought to ponder, and why not to overcomplicate and overestimate things.  

And oh yes, the title! Yeah, I feel like that it's not only a hobby, through all the stains and all the smears, I'm really going to enjoy painting.  I feel like that this is just a brand new way of creativity for me, and although I may be bad now, it can really only get better, like a brand new shade of your favorite color that you might love.  Now I'm going to be honest, I have no idea what I'm going to paint next post, but I'll find something new to do.  Anyway readers, good night!  I can't believe it's only 10:30! 

Sources (The really boring part)

Now I don't want to get sued or anything like that, so the paintings, photographs and .gifs will all belong to me, and if I ever use other photos (memes are the new craze on the Bloggers)  they will still be mine.  -A