Today I am sharing my first Advanced Painting assignment from class. The prompt is to do a plein air landscape and I chose to do mine from my studio space. My focus was to capture both the interior and exterior of my surroundings to fully envelope the view. I also wanted vibrant shapes and colors while still keeping everything cohesive. This is why I started with a bright orange background, as well as to give outlines to the shapes without drawing them in.
Since the assignment also called for at least three separate canvases, I had to work with what I had which were two smaller sizes and one larger size canvas. Some challenges arose as I started to paint. One of them being that the paint wasn’t acting as I hoped it would. I had to play around with a lot of different types of solvents to thicken or thin the paint. Because of this, I think I gained a lot of insight into the proper solvents to use for certain situations. Also, I was getting muddy lines where I wanted clean lines and vice versa in many areas. However, the orange underpainting that I put in helped to separate shapes and create cleaner lines.
Anyway, after the critique session with my classmates and professor, I was motivated to continue working on it. My main goal now is to finish especially the third canvas. I also want to cover the orange in between spaces but not too much that it eliminates the underlying glow. I learned a lot from this piece and I’m excited to transfer the information I gained to the next project.