Practice, Practice, Practice: Week Three

First I just want to say that I returned the easel! I just need to go out and buy a new one. Second, you should never practice painting on top of the dining room table... unless you have newspapers, cardboard, or something that paint will have a hard time going through. Your parents will not be happy if you get paint on their good furniture! Luckily I was using a canvas so it was raised and I wasn't painting directly on the table. 

Through out the week I have been reading about different painting techniques and I have found that with different sized and shaped brushes, different textures and patterns can be achieved. I have also learned about how to start a painting. Sometimes artists choose to sketch out what their final piece is going to look like on their canvas, and other times they just wing-it and "draw" with their paintbrush making strokes as their lines and not caring about staying in the lines. 

One piece of information that has stood out to me the most is that it is good to start with a one color background but making the color dark or light in some areas to show the contrast between the different parts of your painting. This is known as monochromatic. Once this is done, you can start adding more details. This is one method that painters use instead of drawing their outline for their painting. I thought that I would give it a try and I enjoyed it. One thing that helps when doing something like that is a art palette. I find it better than a paper plate because on most palettes there are small round areas to put your paint. This separates the colors from each other and allows you to mix colors that you want to rather than accidentally mixing colors. With a paper plate, it is easy to mix colors. A palette also restricts how much paint you put in the round areas so you do not waste any paint. I got my palette from ACMOORE for $1. 

When I first started my practice piece decided to use a still life, but then I thought that I would find a photograph of nature, and try to paint it how I see it. I've always loved seeing reflections of trees and the sky in water so I picked a photograph that showed that. My first step was making the monochromatic background, and since the sky and water are both blue, I chose that as my color. In the picture below it looks like there is both blue and black, but the darkest shade is in fact blue. To get a darker shade of a color black is mixed with the color, and to get a lighter shade what is added. 

This became the base of my painting. As you can see there are different shades of blue from the center up that get darker, and the center down that get darker. After finishing this I added details like a moon and a small sunset. 

This is the finished piece! I am happy with this piece because I was able to use different techniques and textures to make it look like the sky was getting darker, the sun set was fading, and the moon was reflected in the water. I am going to start sketching out what my final product of my American Gothic piece will look like on a canvas through the following week and then begin painting. I can't wait to see how that turns out!