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.

the arboretum pond

PC and I went to the Arboretum on campus yesterday for a couple hours. We sat in front of this pond (which has huge freaking fish in it, by the way. and also frogs. lots of frogs) and he drew in his sketchbook and I painted with my watercolors.

We watched the geese meander up and down the hills and in and out of the water while we sat with our shirts off (and some of us in a swimsuit) on an old blanket in the warm sunshine.

I think it's kinda cute for a quick study of water (which I'm not at all good at painting yet, but maybe with some more practice?). But anyways, we both decided it was a good use of our time. We got to spend a couple hours in the sunshine flexing our artistic muscles. Even though we are both very different, we have some very neat similarities.

the finished project

Well, school has been out since Thursday, but here is my final project all finished. 

summer finals

Today was my last day of summer watercolor painting, so to celebrate we painted tractors. I know that just sounds super exciting, doesn't it? But well, really, it was a bunch of fun. This mostly stems from the fact that we got to turn the tractors into something they aren't and create a narrative with our painting.

My painting is a tractor gone horribly, horribly wrong. I took the idea of "Frank" from the movie "Cars" except that I made him into a zombie tractor who noms on people. I know - I spend too much time with video games and boys. But I think this picture is pretty freakin' hilarious.

And then Mr. Teacher Man let us out early to work on our final projects. I had absolutely positively no idea what to do. Nothing. I drew a complete blank. So instead of rushing right home to get on that whole idea of finishing my project, I kidnapped PC and we went to lay in the field. Because that's what you do when you're supposed to be doing homework.

We went to Ross and then to WinCo and then back home, where we played some Mortal Kombat and ate pepperoni pizza and I pretended to be thinking about something to do for my project. We finished the pizza, decided to be done with the video game, and I stared at my art supplies. Ugh.

I googled "white vase flowers spring" and combined two different pictures. One with pink and yellow flowers and one with blue. But once I sketched out the bouquet and painted the flowers in, I felt like it was a little empty. So I decided to add a little bee in my painting, just to give it some character.

Before I put him in the picture though, I had to practice because unlike oil painting, once you put something in a watercolor it's there forever.

some new stuff

The summer session is almost to an end. This is my last week of class! And we are rushing around getting everything finished!

Also, the weather finally (finally!) warmed up this week, so we are going to be outside! Outside!

This was outside at an abandoned pea factory on probably the coldest day of the "summer." I wore flip flops (that's right!) and my poor toes turned purple. Purple! I suppose I was asking for it with my questionable footwear? Oh well.

This painting took place in the middle of an alley way. I was questioned by two cops and asked to move out of the way multiple times. I embraced my inner rebel though, and I got the painting done. It was fun and now every time we see cops around the town my professor always says to me "Katie, I don't want you to sit in the middle of the road today."

That's funny for two reasons. The first being that my name is not Katie, that's just what he calls me. The second being that he always says it with a mischievous glint in his eye because really deep down inside he's five years old, too - just like me.

This painting is my master study for the semester. It's Winslow Homes' "The Green Dory" and I there are lots of things I like about this painting, but as with any piece of art there are also lots of things I hate about it. But I'll have you know that my aunt saw my post about it on Facebook and immediately laid claim. She's so spoiled! :)

one for the boys

{Iheartfaces}

♥

i'm getting better with green

This was my outside assignment. We had to do our own botanical illustration, so I painted from a picture that I took at the Botanical Gardens in San Diego. 

This one is from class today. We had 30 minutes to go pick a spot, paint a picture and get back to class. Then we were supposed to take what we had just painted and recreate it on a larger scale. I like the little one the best, so there you go.