My First Oil Paintings

From inspiration to almost complete, I am super proud of my first ever oil painting. Since this last image, I have added to the pathway, the trees in the background and the growth in the foreground. I love how I channeled van Gogh, was able to capture the haze of the fog and take suggestions from my professor about layering and glazing. 

 This is probably one of my favorite photos from my two week trip. No filters, no editing, Sankatay Light actually looked this painterly. To add to the beauty, my classmates are scattered throughout the landscape, wandering, conversing and taking photos of their own.
The lighthouse was actually moved from the spot in the middle of the shot, there is a person in navy blue, to the current location. On the other side of the black fence to the right is the bluff. The erosion continues to claim the land.

There are still a few strokes of paint I would like to add to this image. However, I am very happy with the perspective and color. I am flattered that based on this image alone, my mom's boyfriend has asked me to paint him something. Just in case I get famous!

I hate this painting! It has changed rather drastically from here, although I don't have a current photo. I think I tried to do too much between experimenting with color and palette knives. It was however good a good experience for a later painting. I hope to go back and add more.

My professor saw this sketch I did, during my mid-term meeting/ critique. He loved how sketchy yet detailed it is. He could tell that I start with a medium ground, add darks and pull out lights. His challenge for the second week was to become a more "sketchy" painter. For me, that makes sense. I was so caught up in traditional American landscape painting, a la the Hudson School, that I wanted to capture every shadow and every leaf and detail. That's hard! I have always worked abstractly, but my brain thought that realistic was how I had to paint.

Given my new challenge, I wanted to try "sketchy painting" out before I started my series.  Just like college, I started this painting after 11pm. I am pretty happy with the sketchy details of pebbles created in under an hour. 

 I think this one is done. Perhaps a few highlights to pull out, but I will wait to see how the others turn out. 

I have a few more layers of pebbles and sand to complete. See the erosion from earlier photos?

 

Adding the reeds in the foreground just today, has totally made a difference. I still need to add a shadow to the "window" and maybe a few highlights. I hated this painting until today and am finally excited to see where it goes.

 You need to turn your computer from here on out. Sorry. Not sure what happened.

There is still a lot to be done with this image. There will be leaves on the darker trees and a wind turbine in the "window." There will also be a shadow with the window. Like the lighthouse painting, the lighter trees are meant to be images of the future. Hopefully it works out. 

Light, Water, Earth and Wind of Nantucket.

in process... the final images are due on Friday the 26th!

Sunflowers

I know reproducing "Sunflowers" by van Gogh is a pretty standard lesson. I have only done it twice in the last four years though, and I could not resist reading another Laurence Anholt book to introduce my second graders to the artist.

• first we read "Camille and the Sunflowers" then looked at van Gogh's "Sunflowers." we talked about what we saw in general, then narrowed it down to the elements of art. for the first class, we specifically paid attention to the shapes and lines.  one class thought some of the flowers looked like fuzzy donuts!
• we drew with black crayon on 12x18 manila paper. something that I think helped with the composition was asking the kids to draw all the flowers above the vase first, even having some go off the paper, then adding the stems. for some reason, I think because of a lesson we did back in the fall, my second graders love using overlapping. so when it came time to add the stems, they knew some would overlap before making their way into the vase.
• the second class we began by revisiting the painting and this time looking for as many colors as we could. the kids realized that the flowers were not painted with only yellow!
• with oil pastels, we began to add color. I went from table to table, demonstrating how to layer the oil pastels, and how to add all the little lines and different colors we saw, especially in the fuzzy donut :)

some kids really got into this lesson. so much so that they needed an extra class. about every six weeks I have a "choice" day for second grade. its an earned treat for good behavior. so what I have done the last few choice days is have the students who need more time on an assignment finish first and then pick a choice...

choices are things like "free" draw, using my how to draw books, sometimes a little "special project" with me (watercolor, extra scratch art paper etc.) art games like cloodle or "the word game" (I have a deck of cards with adjectives, nouns, verbs and places. the kids pick one of each to make a silly sentence and have to illustrate it) pattern blocks, crystal climbers and if I am feeling particularly nice, legos... again, it has to be earned and we have a chart to keep track of our good listening and behaving day. having never taught as young as second grade, its been a learning experience, but rewarding. I would like to take the idea of the earned choice and use it next year with other grades.

back to Sunflowers.... it totally worked out that we did this the week of van Gogh's birthday. our principal talks to us about "this day in history" during the morning announcements and I could almost hear the second grade cheer from down the hall when she mentioned it was van Gogh's birth anniversary over the loud speaker. a simple, yet awesome lesson. I can't wait to see what these little ones will be able to accomplish when they are older.

p.s. LOVE my new camera! can't stand loading and formatting pictures in blogger though. so frustrating!