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New Art Blog

Edit: The link in the post just doesn't seem to work, however the one on the side is working now.

EDIT: In case the link doesn't work for my new blog I made a new one on the side and here it is again

blog.limitedpalette.com

I started the other blog although it is a little sparse at the moment. I have been so busy w/ Santa Fe and making sure everything is in order at home that I have barely been able to do anything. I know being in Santa Fe is supposed to be just for sketching, but I find myself more interested in just being in Santa Fe. It is so quite and peaceful. I just want to sit and be.

While there are not many sketches you can check out quite a few photos from Santa Fe here

The look is temporary. I am having a friend make up a new website and I am hoping to have a matching blog template as well.

Painting as a lifestyle choice.

First I would like to say that I removed all of my images from deviantArt. It was not where I wanted my artwork to be shown and their behavior to the artists was a little unsettling.

I just bought my name as a domain and will be working diligently on a website over the weekend (after a solid day of Final Fantasy XII though.) I have a couple of tutorials that should help me out this time around.

The past few months I have seriously been questioning my decision to be an artist. I could not remember why on Earth I would choose this profession. This week I have finally broken through that particular wall. The first chink in the armor was preparing for my exit interview. We were required to present our artwork to a gallery owner as well as a few teachers. I was a nervous wreck. I worried and practiced for two days straight, barely able to focus on anything else.I went over and over my speech both nights before falling asleep. A time normally reserved for making up intricate fictional stories. I tend to make myself sick with worry. While the artwork I was presenting did not necessarily represent who I am as an artist, during a practice session with a marvelous teacher, I rediscovered my passion for watercolor. (Go on Sharon, ask me which teacher.) I did pretty well on my presentation, but the highlight was that the teachers really had nothing to say because they looked at my paintings and thought, oh that's a really nice painting. (Their words. I'm not being conceited.) Granted I would love to have breath-taking, stop the viewer in his or her tracks paintings, but for assignments I will take nice paintings. It's much better than, "That looks like shit."

However, one of the most rewarding comments I have ever received on a painting came today. It was from a teacher that I respect and admire. He is a teacher that I look to for affirmation that I'm not deluding myself and that I may actually make a living of this. That is, as long as I can deal with my depression and paint. He said, "Nobody paints the way you do." I don't know about any one else, but that's the stuff I need to hear. Yes, it's true, I need to hear that I am special. It's the worst when you realized someone has already painted your idea or that you are not the best artist in the class anymore. After all, we were all the best artists in our high school.

Looking at the same painting for days and weeks at a time, I often lose my innocence of the painting. I become jaded and only see the flaws. I see the painting as dull and over done. It takes stepping away from the painting to view it with fresh eyes. Or it takes seeing someone that I really respect getting excited about it.

I am ready to take a break from the painting aspect of being an artist and to delve into the less creative side. I am very excited to spend the summer reading about my favorite artists, reading about how to sell myself, how to get public work etc. I am excited to get my website up and to print out business cards and new promotional material. I know that when I get to deal with the business end of things I will really feel like a professional. When I get to set up my office and organize my files I will know that I am running a business. It will give my mind a chance to focus on technical, left brain stuff and although I will be sketching, painting and messing around, it will give my right brain a chance to relax and recoup from the three year boot-camp that is art school.

Art 4 Art's Sake and the SEA Conference

My auction painting is up at deviantArt. You can check it out by clicking on the link to the left. It's the one of the tulips.

That was a horrible, yet wonderful experience all rolled into one. It was a great experience where I just happened to feel horrible for over half the day. I was so sick to my stomach at the thought of not finishing the painting on time. Of embarrassing myself and not having anything for the gallery to auction off.

However, I did it. It sold.

I am still having a hard time processing everything because it was so much to take in and I had been so busy for the last two days. It was all a rush and I have never had 8 hours go by so fast.

The SEA conference was amazing. I can not wait for next year. I learned so much. I am excited about new possibilities the conference got me thinking about. I am excited about the ideas I had that the conference confirmed.

I had two very motivating days of art.

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. :D

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.

This is what I have been slaving over for the last week...

*Edit: I changed the color balance to show a closer version of the color of the painting. My camera takes very yellow pictures because of the flash. I need the flash because I am too shaky to take a good picture w/o.
This is my version of Sargent's Spanish Dancer.


I am working on a second painting that I think will that if it is not a diptych then at least be a sister piece. I am hoping for a diptych. I love diptychs. Both paintings are huge, coming in at 24" X 32." For watercolor, that is gigantic.

Joe

*Edit:This is an updated picture. I finally had time to set up my wonderful HP Photosmart C4580. (It's amazing!) I also finally installed photoshop on my computer not too long ago and now I am able to scan my paintings and let photoshop piece them back together. This makes a much better image because my photo-taking skills leave much to be desired. So after a very busy busy weekend of painting and the exhibit I bring you the new image.
This is a portrait of Joe. I did this one in three days. The portrait of his mom is a full sheet, this painting is a half sheet. I think this one turned out okay. My teacher said it was the best portrait in watercolor that he has seen come out of the academy. He really likes it, clearly. I like the way I painted. I don't think there is anything wrong with painting, I just don't like how I drew it. That's a huge problem. My other watercolor teacher has been telling me for a year that I need to stop being such a shitty drawer (not exactly his words, but it wouldn't be a surprise if he said it like that). I figured it would sort itself out, but I think I may have just gotten lazier over time. This also comes on the heels of working on a painting yesterday that I drew over the summer where most of the drawing is so wrong. I was very proud of that drawing until I looked at it as I was painting yesterday and noticed that most of the lines are very off. Granted, that was a semester ago, but I really haven't improved. I'm not patient enough.

Also, I need to scan this painting in because this picture is really too yellow. All the nice greens and blues are missing. I will try to fix that on Monday, but I am also going to be getting everything ready to enter two contests later in the week so I will be very busy Monday.

Margaret

This is a portrait of Joe's mom. There are a few things that I really like about this painting, mostly in the face. I like the way I painted the eyes and skin tone. I don't like that I messed up on the drawing of the eyes and they are not on the same line. I also don't like how the nose is drawn because it looks a little sunken in. However, I do think I got a likeness and I would like to try this painting again.
This is also just a detail, the painting is huge and I really don't like how I did the rest of the painting. I just made a few bad decisions and did not have the time to really carry off a painting so large.

I made it!

My painting of Tux has been accepted into the 25th annual Open Juried Exhibition of the Illinois Watercolor Society.


Go me!

Check it out

At the moment this is my favorite painting at the Art Institute. The image does not do the painting justice at all. If you get a chance to go to the Institute this is the painting you should look at. I think I may love this guy more than Sargent and Sargent is my painting soul-mate. The feeling I get standing in front of this piece or one of Sargent's is the reason I became an artist. Although I did not know that feeling existed until after I already started drawing. I want people to have that feeling when they look at my stuff.

The Institute also has a photography exhibit going on right now. It blew me away. The man is a genius. I forget his name. His pictures have multiple golden sections in them and he does it over and over. It's hard enough getting a golden section in a painting, but to get it multiple in a photograph of a space that is a street or some other public area is amazing. Crazy!

Sketchbook 3

This is at Fabyan Forest Preserve in Geneva (I believe.) I had a very fun day painting with Katie. It was gorgeous. We also were in the newspaper because many artists gathered at the park for a paint out.

Sketchbook 2

This is over a couple of days. Maybe 3 or 4 hours total.

Sketchbook

This is a fountain just south of the art institute. It started raining 15 minutes into the painting, but I really like what the paint was doing.

The Best Painting In The World!!

I had the pleasure of "finding" this masterpiece. It is beautiful. If the house was on fire I would grab this painting. Anyone who disagrees is just a hater and you can't appreciate true greatness when you see it.

Some Gesture Paintings

Nude Female

This painting started out as being an exercise in a loose, fast technique and trying to use colors. I am very happy with the way it turned out.

Plein Air Painting (1st time)

This is a close up of my favorite part of the daffodil painting.

1 Hour

This is a quick painting of Joe. I had to make up a project during the week we used a model and he was kind enough to sit in for me.

1st Still Life

This is my second water color painting. My first real still life. I love the way it turned out too. It's an african figurine, a plaster hand w/ broken fingers and a shell. I love the shadow from the figure and the shell. At the beginning of the class that shell didn't look like anything, but a blob and half way through the class it looked awful so I am glad it turned out ok.

Contours

Last one. 

More 

These are the contours I stayed after class to do. Well a small sample of them any way. 

Contours

This is a contour drawing. We used colored pencil. You draw very slowly using with your pencil as parallel to the paper as possible. I am really bad at it. Although the ones I picked to put on here are pretty decent (lots of practice). We get 5 minutes for these 

Conte

This is a conte blocking. You take a piece of conte and use one tone to lay out the basic shape of the person, then you press harder to get another tone for the shadows. You only shade in the darkest shadows and you only use the 2 tones. You also only use the broad side of the conte. The purpose for all that is you just want an abstract form, no details. He looks like a samurai. I love it.  

This is a gesture drawing. They are fun to do, but complicated. You have to sit at the far edge of the bench with your arm straight, drawing by only moving your shoulder and/or elbow, holding the pencil at the back and so lightly that the teacher could just tap your hand and it would fly out. You have to scribble and draw in circles not using any straight lines and then when you get everything laid out you can go back and make a few areas darker. All while not picking up your china marker. (we use china markers not pencils for these) And it's done in 1-3 minutes.  

Gestures

Another gesture, same woman 

Line Drawings

This is the second line drawing I did. I got alot farther on this and I think the only thing the teacher did was the lines on the face. 

This is the first straightline drawing we did for class. This took me the whole week to do and I didn't get hardly any of her legs finished. Plus I think my teacher did some of it. God that one was so hard. It's the same lady as the the one I got to use pencil and white charcoal on.  

Just a quick note on sizes

All work from class is done on 18 x 24 in paper so unless I take a picture of it to post the whole thing will not be on here.

Practice from books is done in my 5 1/2 x 8 in notebook

Actual sketchbook is 9 x 12

Noses 1

I've moved onto the nose, obviously. Just one more page of them before I get to the lips. That's a large chapter.  

Eyes 3

Hopefully I will only have 1 page of eyes left and then it's on to the nose, but that is a much shorter chapter. These are not as good as the other ones. Nothing good from the daily sketch book.  

Practice Eye

This is an eye I did on my own. Trying to use all the practice I am getting from that book. It's done over quick sketches of Tux.