Almost Spring

I guess an oil painting will have to wait for a little longer. It had been more than three months since my last painting and I was getting a little anxious picking up my brushes. After too many evenings of "almost" sitting down to paint, I decided to go for my comfort zone again, water colours. I was looking for a Paintnite event in a near desperate attempt to get back to painting regularly when I came across one of the ads with a 'painting for the evening' thumbnail. It caught my eye and instead of signing up for the event I decided to paint it at home (although painting with a group of people and wine would've been nice too!). I still seem to be struggling with leaves but was quite satisfied with the output :). The satisfaction helps as it motivates me to keep painting. Here's to many more in 2017!

Sunny Day

It has been a while I painted and could feel the rustiness in the recent one I did. The busy work schedule, vacation, job changes and city move did not help either! But hoping to keep at it more regularly from now on. This was inspired by something I had seen on a greeting card. The colours caught my eyes as always. I had to make do without the white colour that I was missing. And the proportions in the painting certainly did go for a toss. But its a reboot to my otherwise forgotten blog :). Hoping to do more oil paintings now!

Self Portrait

The last class was hands down the toughest for me. I am not very good with faces/portraits and guess what the theme for the last class was - self portrait! Of course our teacher did not expect anatomically accurate portraits, more like what you think of yourself to be or what you visualize yourself to be if put on a canvas. I had to start with my favourite colour combination, was like a motivation for me to keep going and not give up :D. To avoid having to paint the face in full, I decided to go for a side profile. But this has definitely inspired me to try a hand on portraits and paints faces more often. 

Reflection

The aim of this class was to be able to paint reflections. Although the more difficult part was to paint the transparent glass and still make it look like a glass! I almost gave up at some point while trying to get the glass right. But the outcome wasn't too bad I thought. I have to try and paint more glasses to be confident though. The apple behind the glass was to bring out the "magnified" effect. Another fun evening painting :)!

Abstract

The following class was abstract painting. After a little theory about composition and colour, we were literally told to paint whatever comes to mind. I started with the warm colour combination, the one on the left. When I reached a point, Guy, our teacher, told me to leave the blank space as is. He thought it adds to the abstract effect. I moved on to another canvas, this time with cool colours, the one on the right. You can probably tell that I got lost at some point in time. I came home and finished this one up later. 

Conch

This was probably the hardest thing I had painted until that day. We were asked to bring a tiny, preferably natural object and blow it up on the canvas. The idea was to be able to give attention to detail and bring out the smallest of features on the canvas. This was a conch kept on my wooden desk. It was quite a lesson to realize the different colours just squinting of the eyes can bring out. But was super fun painting the hidden crevices and the spherical part. 

Genesis

 

I finally sowed the seed for oil painting! I knew that the only way to pick up oil paints was to join some sort of a formal class. I stumbled upon a continuing education course with Emory here in Atlanta and was happy to see a 'Beginner's Oil Painting' class listed. Its been two classes so far and the best part about it has been coming home with a painted canvas :), I'm glad I took it up. We started with black and white still life and then moved onto colour theory. Its super fun to paint with other amateurs and to be guided by a fantastic teacher, Guy Robinson. Looking forward to the remaining classes and some more art...