Gouache painting

For the last few weeks my art class has been working with gouache paint (rhymes with squash), which is an opaque watercolor. I've never really enjoyed using watercolors. I think it's the whole light-to-dark, saving the white space thing that's beyond me. Gouache is a little more manageable though, even if it's not my favorite painting medium. It's pretty easy to fix any mistakes by just painting another layer over them.

The first painting I had to do was a still life that was broken into sections for four different color schemes revolving around one color (I used blue-violet).

Then for my final project I was supposed to do a painting focused on texture. This is what I started with...

...but it just wasn't working for me. Plus my teacher didn't like it. That didn't provide any encouragement to keep struggling with it so....

Last night I decided I would start over with a completely different subject. I was getting really frustrated and a little worried about time. I told myself to relax and let God take care of it in the morning.

Today everything went so much more smoothly. It turned into the kind of piece I can look at for hours afterward and still keep asking, How did that happen? because I certainly didn't know what I was doing at the time. I finished it four hours after starting it, during which time I also walked to the store and back to buy food, ate food, talked to friends and read blogs. So it probably only took somewhere around two hours. Compare that to the ~4.5 hours I spent on that ugly, unfinished donkey. I was expecting to be working on this all the way up to its Thursday deadline!

Conclusion: God is awesome, working with Him is so much easier than working on my own, and I don't know what to do with myself now that I have no more homework.

All of these gouache paintings are done on 14x17" Bristol paper.

Moving onward

First, here is the finished drawing:

In other news, this is my last week of classes and the pressure is on to finish all my final projects and start thinking about packing up my life again to go back home.

Centaur drawing progress

I'm still working on the centaur drawing and hope to be finished by Monday.

I'm not very experienced in working with color so most of this process is rather experimental. As such, I decided to record each step so I can look back at how my experiments worked out. Click on any of the following images to view them larger.

1. Transfer line art to a second piece of paper, using colored pencil. Color highlights yellow.

2. Color mid-tones red.

3. Add blue to shadows.

4. Add brown.

5. Touch-ups and burnishing (blends the colors together and makes them brighter).

Now I just need to come up with a background.

Notes:

• I'm using Prismacolor pencils (Spanish Orange, Poppy Red, Indigo Blue and Light Umber) on 9x12", 65lbs sketching paper. I also use Prismacolor's Colorless Blender for burnishing.
• You don't want to know how much time I spent debating which paper to use (Should I try the 65lbs or the 80lbs? Oh, wait, I have some 75lbs paper here too...) Lol.
• I dislike working "backwards" (When I draw in black and white I usually start with mid-tones/shadows and finish with highlights). So with colored pencils it's easy for me to end up going too dark and not be able to lighten it again.
• If you're interested in looking at the kinds of references I use I found this website helpful.

Unreal times

It's been an intense week in this "safe" little college town.

Monday night, after an absolutely beautiful day filled with good news, good worship, good weather and good entertainment, I had a very long and intense conversation/story sharing time with some floor mates. I have to say that I am so blessed to know people I can be open with about the things that come up in my life, especially my past, but this time I got to mostly just listen and reflect.

Then Tuesday was like disaster day or something.

First, we had a 3-hour evacuation while Haz Mat came to clean up some potentially highly explosive acid that had crystallized in the chemistry stock room. That was exciting, what with everyone talking about the school blowing up. Fire trucks, ambulances and police lined the main street beside the school and police tape and cones marked off most of campus. So all my classes were canceled for that day.

Then in the evening someone downstairs in my dorm set off the fire alarm while cooking a steak.

Then sometime that night someone upstairs in my dorm decided to pull a prank that involved putting a shower curtain in the oven.

Then someone accidentally turned on the oven and burned said shower curtain. I'm now wondering what stupid things people on my own floor might be doing soon.

Also on Tuesday night a girl was assaulted in her apartment on campus. That has a lot of people shook up and security has been heightened quite a bit. Personally, I'm not as shocked by the news as most people here are, especially considering the subject of Monday night's chat, but I'm the semi-paranoid girl who's always looking over her shoulder anyway.

And today I heard that some guy downtown was waving a gun around trying to get the police to shoot him.

I'm feeling more at home every day. (Lol. Not really a good thing). And there are only a couple more weeks until I return to that mad place for the summer.

Continuing the string of strange events, today my roommate got mysteriously locked out of our room while I was at work. My initial response: Darn, that means I have to check all my stuff and make sure nothing's been stolen. (Because if neither of us locked the door it's possible that someone else did). Other people's responses: It was probably the wind coming through the windows that shut and locked the door. I'm not sure how that happened (closed, alright, but locked?) but it appears to be the best explanation.

This is a strange world we live in. Yes, this town is relatively safe; it's crime rate is very low. But that doesn't mean we all have to be surprised by the unexpected. And while common sense and vigilance aren't things I normally have trouble keeping with regard to security, I am reminded that there are other important parts of life that they apply to as well.

Now, brothers, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, "Peace and safety," destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape. (1 Thessalonians 5:1-3).

Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. (Matthew 24:42-44).

At any rate, these kinds of events are good reminders to pray.

This one's galloping to the East Coast

For me, artwork without motivation doesn't get finished. So I'm really excited that I have a new deadline: a close friend's birthday later this month.

I was originally thinking to draw a minotaur for her but realized that with my limited free time it would be better to stick with my strengths as more of an equine artist for now. So I'm drawing a centaur. And I'm having a lot of fun with it because it's offers just enough of a challenge to keep my interest without becoming frustrating (so far).

Today I finished some sketches and the line art for the drawing:

Now I just need to decide how I want to color it. Critique is welcome, especially at this stage when changes can still be made and the person this is going to happens to be my toughest critic.