A session in landscape.

Ok, I know I post about this class a lot on here but I felt it would be nice to give a run down of why I'm particularly fond of it and how it affects how I work.  

Now, being an illustration major, the majority of my classes are, well, based in illustration.  Which is fine but it gets to be particularly frustrating when you realize you're just as behind in composing original images as you are in painting the final product.  Last year I took landscape painting not knowing what to expect.  What I got out of it was an invaluable opportunity to play with paint.  It wound up building not only my ability to compose competent environments, but also my style.  

When you're put on location for (at most) 3 hours to create a painting that is compelling and could be considered finished...you're not quite sure where to begin.  It only takes some practice to get in the swing of things and this painting class pushed my skills on my illustration projects so much farther than if I'd been left alone. 

Needless to say I signed up again.   When starting, I kept with my habits- earth tone palette and underpainting, "fuzzing" painted areas to draw the viewers attention to where I wanted, etc.  Then something important happened (at least, I'm assuming it's important).  I was told to (a)- not blur areas unless completely necessary, and even then reconsider. (b)- break my comfort zone with earth tones and play with color.  I agreed, acknowledging my weak points and lo and behold, there was color.

Intimidation.  Pure highlighter green and simple.

Ok, I've chosen my view, have my borders mapped off, some quick pencil work to indicate where things should be.

Quick underpainting consisting of cobalt blue/paynes grey.

Laying in colors.  Ugly?  Yes.  Expected?  Yes.  Moving on.

And right around here that start-off color is throwing me.  By being so bright, anything I put down appears in comparison to be nothing more than vaguely differentiated hues of mud.  This is not good.

Still pushing forward you can tell how mad I'm getting at a painting by how much I've scratched guidelines into it with the opposite end of my brush.  Questioning what made me think I could paint.

It's going downhill.  Rage quit foreseeable future.

Colors and brushstrokes in general have been softened, adding a bit more warmth and consistency.  (apologies about the difference in photo color- adjusted my lighting settings and forgot to change them back)

Looks like the nasty has come to an end, with some sky popping up and more work in the foreground.

And where she lies now.  Still need to go back and fiddle with the sky (ran out of time in class).

In the end, I need to continue with this "color" thing.  It's taking me to unexpected places and I'm curious to see how it pops into my illustrations this year.

Oops. There I go not posting for a month or so.
I blame cool classes.
For now I'm going to stick to posting work from children's book illustration. During this semester we're expected to mock up an entire book (32pgs in length) and do 5 finished illustrations for it. Now as awesome as kids are, having them as an audience for my artwork has never really happened. I'll get into the story more on a post in the future but for now I'll let the doodles do the talking.
Some character development:





And story boarding thus far:

The End of a Semester

(queue dramatic music)

On a whole it was pretty good. Between Illuxcon and several great classes with great teachers it was a great ride the past few months. So it's with a cheery mood I present to you some random things accomplished so far.









Clearly oil paints are the choice of the semester.

And then random sketchbook doodles of late- with winter break here I've decided to indulge myself and do a lot of fan art (*cough*doctorwho*cough*sherlock) but I also really want to get going on that huge personal project involving angels and whatnot. I have no idea if it will go anywhere but I'm working on character development which will soon head toward more involved story development. But the sketchbook finds a lot of these things floating around in it so I'll throw them out here for now.






But being at the end of the semester is especially frustrating for me (particularly how graduation is approaching faster). But looking at my work this past semester, I'm surprisingly pleased with what I have come up with but then again my style feels like it is struggling more than ever. It feels detached somehow and I can only hope I will accomplish a more connected feel next semester.

Landscape Painting

(a rare "artist habitat"- presumably the artist ran away into the brush)

I figured I would give a more in depth post on what occurs on location when painting at parks for this class (mostly because I had time to goof off with my camera this last time).

The park we painted at last Friday is the Highbanks metro park (about a 30min drive outside CBus). It was a brisk day but the hike from the parking lot to the back field we painted at keeps you warm long after you're done walking. Basically we hike until we something that we want to paint then stop and set up. Everything was going really well (nice overcast conditions, nice weather, nice space, nice trees, nice colors....etc).

(le in progress painting)

But about an hour and a half in Mr. Sun decided to peek out and being the genius I am I had forgotten to take pics of what I was painting before it became sunny. The sun was also shining directly on my painting making it really difficult to figure out the colors I had down compared to how they'd been and how they were now. This is where that photo opportunity sneaked in.

(bad sun BAD SUN)

(as lovely as this lighting is it was ALL WRONG)

I got to play around with my camera buddy for a while before some clouds decided to creep back into view and I was able to shoot my reference and essentially finish my study.

(macro shots are fun)

On the way out I took pictures of everything (terrible side of college- deprivation of nature)

(NOM)

(some of the trees were just fantastic!)

(this guy and several slugs wanted to hitchhike back with me for some reason)

We're blowing these studies up in class as studio paintings and I'll post more on that when it gets further along.


This weekend however I will be at Illuxcon- if for some reason you read this blog and are attending as well shout at me and I'll say hi or something.

100th Post!

(and there was much rejoicing)

Today I want to post a bunch of my work from landscape painting thus far- it's been a really nice class so far and I've been picking up on a lot of stuff I'd been missing in my painting. And hey- playing with oils twice a week? It's keeping me sane.

We did some palette knife paintings which I conveniently forgot to take pictures of....but I'm cozy and comfy watching The Mummy while wrapped up in my Wall-E blanket so I'm not moving for a while. Luckily I have everything else we've done so far. First up- in class painting and the first time we were allowed to use both colors and paint brushes (huzzah!)


Amazingly enough it looks better in the picture I took.....but moving on! We went out to a park on Wednesday because for once it wasn't raining (apparently this has been one of the wettest Ohio autumns on record). But of course we get there and get going for about an hour before it starts to rain. Moral of story? Paint as fast as possible and revise later.


And it was unfortunately slightly damaged from the rain (you can see all the little missing flakes) but we (my roommies and I might go back to the park to hang out and paint this Sunday). If that doesn't happen we're supposed to go back there in class on Wednesday if it's nice out.
Then today was also a b-e-a-utiful drizzly disgusting windy cold miserable misting day of grossness. But we went outside anyway. Take that weather. We went to a different park and hid under shelters while painting. Got a bit more accomplished and took pictures at the end to work from to try and finish it up.


I particularly like what was going on in that section in the back on the right:


Granted I can't get any decent pics of it now since it's still wet but later this next week when it's done and dry expect an update.

SCHOOL.

It hath begun. Three weeks in and I'm managing to stay on top of homework for once in my life. Granted it's only three weeks in. Anywho not much time for a detailed post tonight- if you want to see my ventures (once a day every day) head over to le tumblr:
http://klang-art.tumblr.com/
Since I can't go into detail about current projects (my head is spinning just thinking about them all) have a painting I did at the zoo last week- there's a bear in there (the sleeping blob in between the trees). Not that good but hey, it was an hour and a half in oils. It was fun practice.

Now I'm going to go back home and do more homework (seriously). A much more complete in detail update should make an appearance sometime this weekend.