Second day of the painting workshop. I finally got a set of my own brushes and paints, so I no longer have an excuse for not painting at home. Anyway, I continued my painting of Joan Crawford, which I started earlier this week. It's coming along rather well, but there's plenty of room for improvement.
Mr. Ganes recognized it as Joan Crawford, at least; which I must say was bizarre, because I really don't think it resembles her (he must have seen the photograph). Anyway, he recommended that I watch Grand Hotel, to better understand her, in addition to doing a bit of research. Doing so ought to give some personality to my painting. Unfortunately, I've yet to watch the movie, but at least I've taken the time to learn a bit about her.
...Unrelated, but Joan Crawford's original name was Lucille Fay LeSueur. It was changed when some publicity head decided that it sounded "too fake," which is just another way of saying "too naturally fantastic to believe."
I didn't wash this painting, which I suppose makes up for the absurd rinse fest from last workshop. I've been working on this one for way too long to get rid of it anyways... Which is kinda bad in of itself, since I should be making my paintings in a matter of hours, not a matter of days. Luke does his paintings in about 2 hours, so there's no reason to be taking so long to complete my own pieces.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Monday, March 21, 2011
Painting Workshop 1
We started a new workshop today, and we'll be learning how to paint. Which is fantastic, since I really need all the help I can get - I have a piece I've been working on that I plan on painting, but I can't start until I've had a few more days in this workshop.
We didn't do any painting yet, but we certainly prepared. We talked a bit about the materials we'd need, including brushes and oil paints - since, naturally, the school's materials are terrible. But we also practiced painting style. That is, we learned technique. Where drawing is line orientated, painting is shape orientated instead. We did some charcoal drawings to help us understand this concept, and we'll all be doing more practice of the course of the week.
A note about the previous workshop: I had intended to have seven entries total, with the seventh being an overview of the six prior. Guess I lost interest.
We didn't do any painting yet, but we certainly prepared. We talked a bit about the materials we'd need, including brushes and oil paints - since, naturally, the school's materials are terrible. But we also practiced painting style. That is, we learned technique. Where drawing is line orientated, painting is shape orientated instead. We did some charcoal drawings to help us understand this concept, and we'll all be doing more practice of the course of the week.
A note about the previous workshop: I had intended to have seven entries total, with the seventh being an overview of the six prior. Guess I lost interest.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Fifth Sin
Okay, I finally got some paperclips pinned onto Sin and Virtue, which I'll be using to attach the chains. I still haven't bought the chains themselves, but I might be able to hook them on before Friday. I might not attach them until I'm done painting though, since I'd hate to get paint on the chains themselves.
Chain placement... Virtue will have chains around it's ankles and wrists, like any human would. Sin will have chains bound to it's neck, mouth, and thighs, which I'm hoping gives it a more animalistic appearance.
Oh yeah, I started painting today. About time, I suppose. Exactly what colors I'm going to end up having is something of an enigma for me, but I did start with a simple red for Sin... Which just ended up looking like dark skin. So that's going back to the drawing board.
Chain placement... Virtue will have chains around it's ankles and wrists, like any human would. Sin will have chains bound to it's neck, mouth, and thighs, which I'm hoping gives it a more animalistic appearance.
Oh yeah, I started painting today. About time, I suppose. Exactly what colors I'm going to end up having is something of an enigma for me, but I did start with a simple red for Sin... Which just ended up looking like dark skin. So that's going back to the drawing board.
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Gems of Green
Envy is a form of motivation.
This is a simple dream (that, or I completely neglected to remember the interesting parts). The day goes about as it normally would for me. I remember being driven to the school, walking through the halls, etc. I remember being in the art room, with everyone talking to each other as usual. The conversations aren't that notable. What is notable, however, are the crystals.
The art room, the halls, and as far as I can tell the entire world is encrusted with radiant green crystals, shining brilliantly. Magnificent pylons, more solid light than stone. They vary greatly - some gems are no larger than half my thumb, and some others are easily my height, or perhaps the size of half a car. Most of them are in clusters, surrounded by smaller, similar gems. Some seem to sprout from the surface of the earth, bypassing any flooring in their way. Others are embedded on the surface of desks and shelves and such. They all have a nice, soothing shade of white / green. It's not neon green, like that of cheesy neons signs that Chinese restaurants seem to be so fond of for who knows why, but... It's hard to describe a natural equivalent. They are very light, but not blinding. It's just a very subtle, wonderful tint of green. Actually, the light green of the this blog is pretty close (I had the dream before this blog).
I don't remember doing anything particular with the dream, but I don't recall them being interesting to anyone. We just kinda treated them like furniture.
...Green is my favorite color. It used to be orange, then purple (I must have a thing for secondary colors), but green really should be my favorite color. In psychology, green is the color of creativity. It is the color of life. It represents envy. It is associated with sickness. The heart chakra is depicted as green. It is used to represent pro-environmental views. It is associated with money. It is the color of decay. It is the color of unluckiness.
Incidentally, many of my remembered dreams simply have my regular lifestyle coupled with irregular additions. I'll be behaving as usual while something bizarre stands in the background. I once had a dream where I stayed at home on the computer all day while a giraffe stood in the corner. The giraffe even had a hole in the ceiling so it could poke it's head out, which extended through the roof as well. I never really figured that one out.
This is a simple dream (that, or I completely neglected to remember the interesting parts). The day goes about as it normally would for me. I remember being driven to the school, walking through the halls, etc. I remember being in the art room, with everyone talking to each other as usual. The conversations aren't that notable. What is notable, however, are the crystals.
The art room, the halls, and as far as I can tell the entire world is encrusted with radiant green crystals, shining brilliantly. Magnificent pylons, more solid light than stone. They vary greatly - some gems are no larger than half my thumb, and some others are easily my height, or perhaps the size of half a car. Most of them are in clusters, surrounded by smaller, similar gems. Some seem to sprout from the surface of the earth, bypassing any flooring in their way. Others are embedded on the surface of desks and shelves and such. They all have a nice, soothing shade of white / green. It's not neon green, like that of cheesy neons signs that Chinese restaurants seem to be so fond of for who knows why, but... It's hard to describe a natural equivalent. They are very light, but not blinding. It's just a very subtle, wonderful tint of green. Actually, the light green of the this blog is pretty close (I had the dream before this blog).
I don't remember doing anything particular with the dream, but I don't recall them being interesting to anyone. We just kinda treated them like furniture.
...Green is my favorite color. It used to be orange, then purple (I must have a thing for secondary colors), but green really should be my favorite color. In psychology, green is the color of creativity. It is the color of life. It represents envy. It is associated with sickness. The heart chakra is depicted as green. It is used to represent pro-environmental views. It is associated with money. It is the color of decay. It is the color of unluckiness.
Incidentally, many of my remembered dreams simply have my regular lifestyle coupled with irregular additions. I'll be behaving as usual while something bizarre stands in the background. I once had a dream where I stayed at home on the computer all day while a giraffe stood in the corner. The giraffe even had a hole in the ceiling so it could poke it's head out, which extended through the roof as well. I never really figured that one out.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Library
Another dream entry. I should really be doing more of these, if only to keep better records.
Mairead said she had a lucid dream the other day, which was spectacular. Although I have to admit, my first impression was closer to envy than excitement (envy's a bit of a problem for me, now that I think about it. Maybe I could've ran with that during the workshop, but it's a bit late now). Ooh, trivia time. My email, RenegeYes, is an anagram of GreenEyes.
Anyway, turns out lucid dreaming isn't that uncommon at the school. Mairead is already accomplished, and she says James Lopez has some experience with it. I know about some other students who have some sense of it (how much I don't know), so I should really be taking advantage of that fact.
Anyway, this one is, shall we say... Poorly recorded. I waited too long to write about this one, and I've forgotten too much about it. I can at least make out the setting, a few characters, and the general idea behind it. And maybe one or two significant scenes.
It's a dark room. Not dark like in The Complex, where everything is overshadowed, but dark like the furthest reaches of an unlit room. The room is vast, but not endless, and I feel that somewhere in the distance is an entrance through which I arrived - naturally, the entrance never appears again.
Everything in the dream appears to be lit by candlelight - at least, that's the impression I get. Thinking about it, there's really nothing to suggest candles. The light doesn't flicker, any extraordinary temperatures escapes my notice, and most notably, there are no candles to be seen. I still feel it's candles though, and everything can be seen quite clearly. But when I say "everything," I exclude the floors and walls and ceiling of the room.
This is a competition. People are working to get ahead of one another - in one area, people are climbing haphazardly over the dull green bars of something resembling a playground structure (vague description, I know, I just can't remember the name of the damn thing). It's one of those giant boxes made out of bars, crisscrossing over one another. I can't remember how tall this thing is, and I forget if it was endless or not. In another area, school desks are placed facing one another, forming a single, vast file of two desks facing each other, their occupants sitting either across from one another, or to the side. The occupants are focused on writing. There's something about this particular set-up (the desks), that I can't seem to remember... Maybe there was more than one file? No, maybe the desks were walled in like cubicles. Maybe the tower from before is close to it... Ugh, I can't remember it at all. This is why I should write earlier.
Anyway, they're competing over a book. It's a dark green book with golden text on the cover and tanned pages. I never look inside, but I know that it's not the book that's valuable, but the text inside. I get the feeling that it tells part of a story, whose author is dead.
There is a single person of interest. I'll name him person A, Adam (you're all familiar with my naming system: Adam, Barry, Cale, Daniel, Evan, Alice, Bridget, Celia, Daria, Eve, etc.)
Adam, who oversees the proceedings is a tall man with dark skin, his eyes obscured by a pair of round sunglasses - his eyes are all but invisible. He has thin dark hair, which was either (I can't remember which) swept back, flat against his scalp, or just matted. He has a mustache, but no beard. He wears mostly tan and white, and is wearing... something formal. I think it was some kind of tanned tuxedo or something. Adam is showing me the desks and the playground tower, along with various other trials and tests. He presents each one with a casual gait and a sweeping motion with his arm - he does not regard me with either contempt nor preference. I know that Adam is the author of the book, despite also knowing the author to be dead. Adam looks very much alive, of course, but the death is not disputable.
Eventually, Adam takes a position atop a short elevation - something resembling a cross between a stage and a pyramid, with a wide flat top. He hoists the green book into the air and flings it outwards, where it knocks into my arm and falls to the ground. Even as it soars through the air, the people seated at their desks and those on the tower follow it's path and chase after it, jumping and sliding over the ground to get it. Dream ends.
Mairead said she had a lucid dream the other day, which was spectacular. Although I have to admit, my first impression was closer to envy than excitement (envy's a bit of a problem for me, now that I think about it. Maybe I could've ran with that during the workshop, but it's a bit late now). Ooh, trivia time. My email, RenegeYes, is an anagram of GreenEyes.
Anyway, turns out lucid dreaming isn't that uncommon at the school. Mairead is already accomplished, and she says James Lopez has some experience with it. I know about some other students who have some sense of it (how much I don't know), so I should really be taking advantage of that fact.
Anyway, this one is, shall we say... Poorly recorded. I waited too long to write about this one, and I've forgotten too much about it. I can at least make out the setting, a few characters, and the general idea behind it. And maybe one or two significant scenes.
It's a dark room. Not dark like in The Complex, where everything is overshadowed, but dark like the furthest reaches of an unlit room. The room is vast, but not endless, and I feel that somewhere in the distance is an entrance through which I arrived - naturally, the entrance never appears again.
Everything in the dream appears to be lit by candlelight - at least, that's the impression I get. Thinking about it, there's really nothing to suggest candles. The light doesn't flicker, any extraordinary temperatures escapes my notice, and most notably, there are no candles to be seen. I still feel it's candles though, and everything can be seen quite clearly. But when I say "everything," I exclude the floors and walls and ceiling of the room.
This is a competition. People are working to get ahead of one another - in one area, people are climbing haphazardly over the dull green bars of something resembling a playground structure (vague description, I know, I just can't remember the name of the damn thing). It's one of those giant boxes made out of bars, crisscrossing over one another. I can't remember how tall this thing is, and I forget if it was endless or not. In another area, school desks are placed facing one another, forming a single, vast file of two desks facing each other, their occupants sitting either across from one another, or to the side. The occupants are focused on writing. There's something about this particular set-up (the desks), that I can't seem to remember... Maybe there was more than one file? No, maybe the desks were walled in like cubicles. Maybe the tower from before is close to it... Ugh, I can't remember it at all. This is why I should write earlier.
Anyway, they're competing over a book. It's a dark green book with golden text on the cover and tanned pages. I never look inside, but I know that it's not the book that's valuable, but the text inside. I get the feeling that it tells part of a story, whose author is dead.
There is a single person of interest. I'll name him person A, Adam (you're all familiar with my naming system: Adam, Barry, Cale, Daniel, Evan, Alice, Bridget, Celia, Daria, Eve, etc.)
Adam, who oversees the proceedings is a tall man with dark skin, his eyes obscured by a pair of round sunglasses - his eyes are all but invisible. He has thin dark hair, which was either (I can't remember which) swept back, flat against his scalp, or just matted. He has a mustache, but no beard. He wears mostly tan and white, and is wearing... something formal. I think it was some kind of tanned tuxedo or something. Adam is showing me the desks and the playground tower, along with various other trials and tests. He presents each one with a casual gait and a sweeping motion with his arm - he does not regard me with either contempt nor preference. I know that Adam is the author of the book, despite also knowing the author to be dead. Adam looks very much alive, of course, but the death is not disputable.
Eventually, Adam takes a position atop a short elevation - something resembling a cross between a stage and a pyramid, with a wide flat top. He hoists the green book into the air and flings it outwards, where it knocks into my arm and falls to the ground. Even as it soars through the air, the people seated at their desks and those on the tower follow it's path and chase after it, jumping and sliding over the ground to get it. Dream ends.
Fourth Sin
So I finally fixed that leg of Virtue's - I creatively decided to apply yet even more tape. It looks a bit angular now, but it's nothing unbelievable. Unfortunately, while fixing Virtue's leg, I discovered that Sin had decided to decapitate itself, so that also had to be fixed (after a generous amount of Yorick jokes). In any case, by the time we started overlaying the figures with paste, the two were reassembled.
Work went along smoothly. A bunch of us managed to finish with the paste, so we brought out the hairdryer to speed things along. At this rate, we might be able to start painting by Tuesday - which, now that I think about it, still isn't too spectacular in regards to time. Six periods of work shouldn't be underestimated, but next week will be our last in this workshop. That gives us six periods to finalize pasting, paint, and photograph everything before sending them off to auction. Not to mention the time spent drying anything that's been pasted again.
My own pieces are alright. Like I said, they've been assembled despite reasonably minor setbacks. I'm done with papiermache, so all that's left for me is painting and figuring out where to buy some tiny chains to connect the two (Margaret suggested a hardware store, which sounds about right). Ugh, now that I think about it, I haven't really thought about how I'd attach the chains to the figures. Sin has a few paperclips protruding from beneath the newspaper, so I can hook a couple there, but the rest of his body is still uncooperative. Virtue is the same, having no exposed clips to speak of. I might end up having to papiermache some more just to connect the chains... Which is pretty time consuming.
Oh yeah, and we also remembered that we were supposed to document this workshop. That hasn't been going too well. I think somebody mentioned documenting her work on her own, which I thought was smart - I only have the one picture I posted before, which I just did on impulse. At least we got a few pictures today.
Work went along smoothly. A bunch of us managed to finish with the paste, so we brought out the hairdryer to speed things along. At this rate, we might be able to start painting by Tuesday - which, now that I think about it, still isn't too spectacular in regards to time. Six periods of work shouldn't be underestimated, but next week will be our last in this workshop. That gives us six periods to finalize pasting, paint, and photograph everything before sending them off to auction. Not to mention the time spent drying anything that's been pasted again.
My own pieces are alright. Like I said, they've been assembled despite reasonably minor setbacks. I'm done with papiermache, so all that's left for me is painting and figuring out where to buy some tiny chains to connect the two (Margaret suggested a hardware store, which sounds about right). Ugh, now that I think about it, I haven't really thought about how I'd attach the chains to the figures. Sin has a few paperclips protruding from beneath the newspaper, so I can hook a couple there, but the rest of his body is still uncooperative. Virtue is the same, having no exposed clips to speak of. I might end up having to papiermache some more just to connect the chains... Which is pretty time consuming.
Oh yeah, and we also remembered that we were supposed to document this workshop. That hasn't been going too well. I think somebody mentioned documenting her work on her own, which I thought was smart - I only have the one picture I posted before, which I just did on impulse. At least we got a few pictures today.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Third Sin
Today was our third day in the workshop. I managed to finish Sin's figure last Sunday, and I ended up building some stands at the last minute for both Sin and Virtue. I also decided to use an improvised wire frame (readas: bent paperclips) to keep their legs firm, which served rather well. I only used them along the legs though, since there isn't much threat of their arms deviating. There are about eight clips on Virtue (four to each leg) and at least a dozen on Sin, since Sin's weight distribution is a bit tricky.
Anyway, today was our first day working with the paste itself - everything up til now has been framework. If I recall correctly, the paste is just warm water and... I think it was wheat powder? It wasn't nearly as messy as I assumed it would be, but Margaret did warn that some of us might not like the feel of it - which apparently included me, since I personally found the stuff... Gross? Nothing bad enough to warrant anything against using it of course, but it took forever to get it all off my hands. But I imagine I could get used to it.
Work went along smoothly. We had to spend some time during the workshop to finish up our newspaper/tape stage, but most of us were applying the paste by the end of class. I managed to cover Virtue entirely, but it's leg ended up breaking (hilariously, I don't think I applied [i]enough[/i] tape to the little mummy), so I'll have to tape it again once the paste dries. I also did a lot of pasting on Sin, but I'm nowhere near done with it. I also added extensions to Virtue's legs, so Virtue appears to be kneeling instead of standing. It's obviously not my original design, but at least now the legs don't look dwarfed compared to the rest of the body.
We got plenty of work done, but the workshop has plenty of socializing too, which was fun. Not something I'm quite used to, but definitely fun. We talked about music (and played it over the speakers), tossed newspaper balls at each other, and talked about Dexter, which is apparently something of an addiction among more than one of the members of the Coofebs clan.
Anyway, today was our first day working with the paste itself - everything up til now has been framework. If I recall correctly, the paste is just warm water and... I think it was wheat powder? It wasn't nearly as messy as I assumed it would be, but Margaret did warn that some of us might not like the feel of it - which apparently included me, since I personally found the stuff... Gross? Nothing bad enough to warrant anything against using it of course, but it took forever to get it all off my hands. But I imagine I could get used to it.
Work went along smoothly. We had to spend some time during the workshop to finish up our newspaper/tape stage, but most of us were applying the paste by the end of class. I managed to cover Virtue entirely, but it's leg ended up breaking (hilariously, I don't think I applied [i]enough[/i] tape to the little mummy), so I'll have to tape it again once the paste dries. I also did a lot of pasting on Sin, but I'm nowhere near done with it. I also added extensions to Virtue's legs, so Virtue appears to be kneeling instead of standing. It's obviously not my original design, but at least now the legs don't look dwarfed compared to the rest of the body.
We got plenty of work done, but the workshop has plenty of socializing too, which was fun. Not something I'm quite used to, but definitely fun. We talked about music (and played it over the speakers), tossed newspaper balls at each other, and talked about Dexter, which is apparently something of an addiction among more than one of the members of the Coofebs clan.
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