Painting Practices: No White Allowed

Wednesday: Painting Practice:

Several things happened today. Most of it was good, but my bank account left me emotionally damaged. Class started at 9, I accidentally got there at 9. This was the alright, but it won't be happening again (probably). Things went from okay to good to bad real fast when the syllabus was brought out. I'll insert the list now:

I had to purchase the top chunk of the list during the two hours of time the professor gave us during class for lunch and a Blick run. As you can see, the top 5 items on the list isn't near a third of the list itself. The gesso, gesso brush, staple gun, staples, 8 stretcher bars, canvas, and terpenoid alone cost $141 (!!!). I'm procrastinating going back for the rest of it for fear of spending twice that amount on the rest of it, but hey! Thank god for 20% of total purchase coupons and back to school sales!!!

The good news is, upon return from carrying half of my body weight 5 blocks or so we turned the stretcher bars, canvas, and staples into two stretched canvases of which we put the first layer of gesso on. We then were informed of our assignment to be completed by next Wednesday which I'm ecstatic about. What? An assignment that I'm looking forward to? Absurd! But it is art school. 

The Next Wednesday: Painting Practice Day 2: 

I bet you're wondering what our assignment was. Well, we had to select a random postcard depicting a painting in the museum. Much to my surprise and delight I chose 'A Sunday on La Grande Jatte,' otherwise known as the Ferris Bueller Painting. And if you're not familiar with it: 

You might not be able to tell what's actually going on in this painting on your small screen, but that- my friends-is pointillism. You stipple little dots with your paint brush, honestly it's mental. But not far off from this piece I did earlier this year across some white roses: 

So needless to say, it was right up my alley. We had to choose a portion of it to replicate and sketch while standing in the museum. You see, there's quite a lot going on in this painting, it's massive [see below]. So even selecting a small section means quite a lot of work for Belle. Lets just say, four hours of my life and two sore feet later: 

Okay, so I didn't do the test painting in the museum, but I did take a couple hours back in the dorm to do that fun little project. Needless to say, the TA was pretty impressed with my sketching/pointillism job so it was all worth it. BUT the professor is a fan of keeping us all on our toes, and failed to mention that we actually weren't aiming to replicate the painting in class. Rather divide the sketch and our canvas up into four sections and practice different oil painting techniques in each one of them. This meant no stippling for me. Today I stood for 7 hours straight and learned so much. 

The first section of the painting had to be done impasto style, meaning you lay the paint down thick. But with a twist: No White Allowed. I honestly thought that this was the end of me, I mean the little girl is in that quadrant, and her dress is white. The grand allure of the SAIC Painting Class was all scrapped, thrown out the window. But I took a breath, picked up my brush, and moved on with my life. Cause you have to be open to new experiences and growth at an expensive art school. 

The next quadrant was meant to be a wash in which you take the oil paint and thin it down to a transparent state with terpenoid and apply very light, overlapping layers. Still no white. But also, we couldn't do a pencil outline to begin in this section. We had to apply paint directly to the canvas with no instruction as to what is suppose to go where, just color blocking. 

The third section was a combination of impasto and the wash. The outlines were drawn using the impasto style and then the spaces in between were filled in with a wash. Again, no white. Surprisingly, the white wasn't missed this round. Alright, maybe it was because a peachy flesh color is hard to accomplish without white. 

The fourth and final portion of the painting was interesting. The style choice wan't specified, we had the past 6 hours and 15 minutes to experiment with all of these different ways to oil paint and now it was up to us. AND we could use white! It seemed too good to be true. It was. We couldn't use the postcard for color reference or our sketch book to see how the painting looked in that quadrant. Luckily, I had stared at the painting for roughly 6 hours over the past week plus the 6 previous hours in class so I wasn't in too much trouble, but some kids were struggling. But look on the bright side, white paint. 

Things I Learned Through My TA Cause He's Amazing and a Practicing Painter Himself and Knows Practically Everything, or at Least it Seems That Way, Like He's so Interesting, and of Course My Professor Richard

1. Every part of a painting holds a color and a value within that color. You don't need white to see the colors emerging from the painting and white only makes your painting opaque. Oil Paint is made of flecks of pigment that are surrounded in oil to allow the light to enter the paint and bounce around making the painting translucent. That's why even the darkest paintings in museums produce a rich luminous light. The light is pushing the color forward via reflections. White does not provide you with that reflection, no matter how light the value you're mixing is.
2. When you're working on an oil painting and you begin with an outline, you can not treat it as a 'paint by number' as my work was referred to many times today. You need to move around the painting. Add "notes" of color to the surface and do it quickly. Impressionist paintings are so true to the moment they were captured in because they were captured in the moment. The details come later, the color comes now. Otherwise that beautiful cloud you're capturing in real life is going to drift away just as that sail boat faded into the distance. 
3. More on number 2: Your painting must always remain in a state of completeness. What I mean by that is it must appear presentable to a viewer at any given time. For instance, if you are a fan of the 'paint by number' method as I am and you like to get sections done at once, apparently that's wrong. Again, the details come later. Make the base appear presentable with your color and then continue adding to the painting. Remember, oil painting is an additive and subtractive process, but more on that later...
4. An oil painting becomes an oil painting when colors are blended into one another. While color blocking and making those color "notes," you must keep putting different tones next to one another to capture dimension within your two-dimensional canvas. A solid green next to a solid flesh color makes for a 2D mess. Blend some colors in between for a more interesting dynamic. 
5. The way you hold a paint brush is crucial and hard to keep in the right position. You can't hold your brushes like a pencil. Richard tells us to hold it like a banana, if you're into that analogy. Also the way you apply the paint according to the method you're using is also crucial. I don't know how to explain this one, you kind of have to see for yourself. Trust me though, there's a lot of rules. 
6. When you're doing impasto outlines with the oil paint itself, vary your lines shapes and sizes. One continuous line of the same thickness isn't interesting. Lines of differing sizes and shapes and curves are. 
7. When you're color blocking impasto style, make sure your brush strokes go in different directions and curves. Just like your lines, chunks of color instantly have more tone and depth when they're varied. 
8. Back to the lack of white paint, after you're allowed to use white again in the last 45 minutes of class without having used it for the last 6 hours and 15 minutes, you realize that it's not as crucial to a piece as you may have thought. I used it far less than I thought I would after having the chance to use it again. Some colors do require white, but when you're making general colors lighter, there are a lot of alternatives available rather than instantly adding white. 

This exercise was not what I expected at all, but it only got stranger as we finished it up. Richard called us over once more and told us our final task for the day. We needed to section off the 3 portions of the painting that we liked and then scrape/wipe off the rest of the paint. "When you're all done with this painting, you're going to think it's the shittiest thing you've ever made. And if it's not, well then what are you even doing here," he said, but that didn't stop me from having an attachment to my shitty painting after standing in front of it for the last 7 hours. But, as I mentioned before: painting is an additive and a subtractive process. This was the time for the subtractive piece to come in. Here's the before and after. We didn't have time to cover all of the white space in the last three sections because sometimes even 7 hours is not enough time.  And please give my shitty painting a break, it's sensitive and suppose to look that way alright. 

Before the removal:

After the removal:

Apparently we will block the part we attempted to scrape away with white next week and then do who knows what with it. Remember, Richard is a fan of spontaneity. 

I was going to speak about my other classes in this blog post, but honestly painting has been quite an adventure in itself and I feel as though it deserves it's own post. We can talk about how my Research Studio class began with yoga another time. 

For now, I leave you with yet another list in case you ever feel like you just need to go to an art museum and draw something for a change of scenery. Or you're attending an art school yourself and are required to suffer. Either way, enjoy to your best abilities. 

A List of the Things You Learn From Sketching a Famous Painting in a Large Gallery Setting:

1. To get the obvious out of the way, it's a great method to study form, technique, shape, depth, light, and all of that other artistic jargon with the actual masterpiece directly in front of you. How much of a better situation for a mater study could you get? Well, I'll tell you...
2. A lot of people visit the Art Institute of Chicago on a daily basis. Any museum really, but this one is where my 'sketching in public' experience occurred. Less people would have made for a better master study situation. 
3. Many people have very poor spacial awareness skills and feel the need to stand directly in front of you for their own viewing pleasure and/or the better photo angle...regardless of what you were doing prior to ending up staring at their back. 
4. Speaking of spacial awareness, if people notice you are holding a sketchbook, they'll stand just about as close a they can get to you in your peripheral vision without 'disturbing' you. And the occasional few will whisper to the person they're with, "She's drawing that."
5. And even more rare, you'll get the person that actually speaks directly to you, either to ask to take a photo of you sketching the painting or to actually introduce themselves to you!
6. After standing for 2 hours straight and using your arm as a drafting table, you end up quite sore. My suggestion to fix this problem is yoga. The Art Institute of Chicago will not appreciate it if you do yoga in their gallery spaces. Save that for the start of your Research Studio Class on Fridays. 
7. You notice that every group of 'museum-goers' has one leader and multiple followers. The leader is a person that believes they are the art expert and no one can tell them otherwise. Especially with standing in front of 'A Sunday on La Grande Jatte' for 4 hours over the past two days, I've found that the extensive knowledge known of the piece by these self-proclaimed art history majors is as follows: "So stand here towards the back, alright? Notice how it looks complete and whole. Now walk forward towards the painting and you'll realize that it's all tiny little dots. That's called pointillism." Every. Single. One of them. This statement is usually followed by going directly up to the piece, putting their hand across the wire strung near the floor, and gesturing in a way that they too were stippling their lives away on the massive canvas. You know, to give an example of how pointillism is accomplished, only to be yelled at for crossing the line by the security personnel standing near by. 
8. A little background knowledge goes a long way when it comes to explaining why a piece is the way it is to a confused group of tourists that believe they "may know why the boarder is brightly colored in comparison to the painting." And no, it is not because the entire underpainting are those same bright colors. 
9. Museums close a lot earlier than they should, well, for an art student. With single classes from 9am to 4pm (Yes you read that correctly. One class, seven hours) it presents only an hour for me to sketch until the museum closes at 5 (8pm on Thursdays!!!)
10. It's one of the most intimidating things ever. People will say the sketch looks good, but honey you know it does not.

-Belle xx