sketched

I've been playing around with the idea of a graffiti landscape, and at first I had no idea what that could possibly entail. So I did what every young artist does these days and hopped on the interwebs to see what kinds of came up when I entered those words into the google machine. I was pleasantly surprised by what I found.

I also talked to my family to see if they could brainstorm any ideas, and let me tell you - some of the things that father of mine came up with where pure genius.

So here are two concepts I'm developing:

This is based off of the idea to merge the graffiti and landscape through a word. At first I was trying to put the landscape inside of the letters, but I wasn't really excited about what was flowing from my fingers. So instead I started drawing the landscape on top of the word, still incorporating plants and trees into the letters, but in a different way than originally anticipated. So far so good.

And here we have a slightly underdeveloped concept, placing graffiti font into a graffiti style landscape. So far I love this, but it still needs some work. I want to put a little Zacchaeus figure in the tree and move the letters around to a better spot. 

Eventually these will turn into paintings and not just sketches. Which will be incredibly exciting! At least for me.

Sunset Over Lake Pend Oreille

under painting as an original composition

I had to find a pre 19th century painting and turn it into my own painting by taking a portion of that painting, the under painting, and make it look like it is its own composition. I always get grand ideas about painting landscapes. I always think I can do it and it will be fun and awesome and all these things and then I start in on this painting and freak out a little when things don't look how I think they will. However, this one pleasantly surprised me.

This is just the under painting of my own composition. The sky is my favorite part.

Then I started adding in the textures of the leaves on the trees.

The stumps came next. It was difficult to make them look like they were part of the painting. They looked a little disconnected from the painting until I went back over them with more green to tuck the tops underneath the foliage.

I added a bunch more detail into the stumps and I re-did the tree on the right side of the painting.

After that I moved on to the cows and the reflection on the pond. The cows I am not happy with. I think they look kind of stubby legged, but oh well.

The red leaves on the top right corner had me super nervous. I was worried that they would take over the painting or not match the rest of the composition, but I was really happy with the way they turned out.

After I brought the whole painting up to the same level, the green leaves needed to be reworked, so I added some more high lights above a couple different tree trunks and added some more texture.

After our final critique it was decided that I needed to bring some red and orange into the other trees to make it look more like the leaves are turning colors and then that red in the top corner won't look so out of place. Also, I'm gonna darken the branches in the tops of the trees to make them stick out less like sore thumbs and look more like they belong in the tree tops.

Almost Finished

The tree needs a little more work to make the leaves actually look like they're part of the tree trunk. Also, I still have to lay in all the people that will be on the sand in the mid-ground. At this point though, I'm just waiting for everything to dry a little bit more so I stop pushing paint around on the canvas and making a mess.

I have to be completely finished by Wednesday at 9:30 in the morning, so I'm probably going to go back later tonight or tomorrow after school. Astonishingly, I actually like it so far. Who knew this would happen?

It's Starting Again

We are creating a collage painting of historical landscape painting. I had to take two different paintings and merge them together to create a new hybrid landscape painting original (somewhat) to me. We are required to use a pallet knife, and we all remember how much I love those, right?

Ahem.

I started with the sky because it's a lovely purple color. It's my understanding that color matching is not really something we are focusing on at the moment, so I'm not worried that my sky is way more purple than the original. Maybe I just really like purple, okay? Okay.

Now that that's settled...

I totally painted the sky too large, so that caused me to reevaluate my painting method and content placement. I think I have it figured out, I just have to wait for it to dry so I can layer some color over the top of what I already have on the canvas.

So far, I'm liking this more than my first pallet knife experience. Although, when I start getting into the detail work, we'll see how my attitude changes.

This is what I ended up completing today. Not bad for a couple hours of work, and I'll restart again on Monday laying down the browns for the ground and the large tree. The finished product should look something like this:

But don't hold your breath. I'm just saying.