Classes are all starting at Marywood and I am pretty exited for this semester. I am not able to take many art courses, but one that I am taking is Painting II. I’m pretty nervous for a paint course because I am not a 2D artist, like I have expressed in many of my previous posts. I decided this week to talk about the first oil paintings I have ever done. I had never used oil before I came to college. I actually had only ever done one painting on canvas ever before college as well.
This was my only painting I ever did before college. I even had to stretch my own canvas and gesso it myself. This picture is actually before it was finished, that is why is it so choppy, but I could not find a picture of it all finished on my cell phone.
Coming to Marywood I was terrified of taking a painting class but it actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. I had it with Steven Alexander, who is a wonderful professor. This first painting I ever did was a still life, and we could only use 5 colors and they could not be from the tube.
It wasn’t terrible for my first painting ever but looking back at it I had a lot of room for improvement. I do enjoy this painting a lot though probably just because it was my first! It will definitely hold a special place in my heart and on my wall, haha.
My second painting had a full range of color and we just had to paint what we saw. I liked oil because we could fix stuff, because of how wet the paint stayed, but the worst part of it was trying to clean my brushes afterwards. That was not fun at all. Most of my brushes got crunchy, even after I thought I did a really good job cleaning them. My favorite painting was definitely my second one because I felt as if I had a better understanding of the paint and I wasn’t as afraid to experiment.
I can’t wait to see what kind of paintings I will have after this semester! It’s going to be an interesting semester!!
