Mouth and Chin

News: Two of my WIPs are online at DeviantArt. The link is to the left. I have two more, but one is a surprise and they both need to be finished by Friday. I don’t want to take the time to load them twice in a few days because I now have a lot of painting to do.

I also posted a new image of the best painting in the world, just in case you need an excuse to feast your eyes upon it one more time.

20 Minute Hand Study

1 Hour Gesture

5 Minute Gesture

My favorite gesture by far.

3 minutes is almost too short for my style. The wet on wet technique that dominates my way of painting does not work well in such a short period of time. There’s no time to dry between layers and while everything blends together beautifully there’s no definition in the figures. 5 minutes however, at least when using just two colors is just right. We tried a six minute long pose and it took the spontaneity out of it.

3 Minute Gestures

The first gesture of the week. I enjoy this one because it shows my progress from the first time I took this class. I was known as puddles that semester. Not because I have a habitual problem wetting the floor, but because all my gestures looked like puddles of color. Beautiful puddles, but puddles none the less. At least this one has a ghost of a figure. That makes me happy.

Meg, 2-4-09 (40 Minutes)

This model was a bad two weeks for me. I don’t have anything against her, but I hate drawing her. She is near impossible. Her coloring is difficult as well. Everytime I sat down I happened to be in mostly shadow and her shadows tend to be grey. We were supposed to be doing one to two day drawings, but most of mine turned out so bad right away that I just kept starting over. Blah. But it is over and I am very happy with the next set of paintings.

One more thang….

I have started to turn this blog over to the sketchbook. I deleted most of my old assignments, except a few that I deemed necessary to show my progress over the last three years as well as paintings from last semester.

I think that it is important to show my progress as a student for people who wander by and maybe think that art is only about natural talent and not about hard work, dedication and commitment. Or at least not as much about those things.

Since I now have Photoshop I will try to crop and correct the older posts to stream-line the look. I may make a new post with a few corner-stone pieces to mark my progress and get rid off all the seperate posts.

I have not decided if I will continue to post new assignments for the rest of the semester or just post them at DeviantArt until I get my own site up. The link is elisha201.deviantart.com. If I do decide to only post there I will announce new posts on this page and provide a link. Hopefully I will be prolific enough with the sketchbook to defeat the need for filler.

Next week is a conference for Self Employed Artists and it is also the charity event for The Next Picture Show Gallery in Dixon, IL, a non-profit organization that held the annual IWS exhibit. Artists are coming in to paint from 12-8pm and at 6pm the public is allowed to come in and watch the artists finish. At 8 there will be an auction for all the artwork. All proceeds fund the gallery and it’s efforts to bring fine art to Dixon.

I am very excited about the opportunity to participate in this event, but I am also terrified. But my moto is: “If you’re going to fail, fail hard.” I have to do it.