Category: USC Aiken

Day 536 – Saturday in Aiken

Leave a comment

Life modeling today at USC Aiken 

  The lovely Ilenia was our model. Great pose- The thinker!! Acrylic on illo board. 

Felt good to be painting and hanging out with other artists today.  

After first forty minutes – legs are too long!!

 Lots of good natured banter and holiday cheer today. The pound cake that I took was devoured. Just a few pieces left for Al our esteemed leader who was off celebrating his daughters marriage.  

  
   
After I got home I gave her a good look as I sat eating a sandwich. Her chin was jutting out to far. The arm under her chin was too straight. Nose too long.     
More shadows in the foreground. Cerulean blue shadows in the drape. 

Making progress.  How she looks at present!! I think I need a nap now. Going to let Ilenia lean on the mantel and tell me if she’s done or not. She will know. Then I will know. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret who has presents to wrap and a sweater to finish knitting. Xxx 

 

Day 472 – She was too pretty!!😳

2 Comments

  
She was too pretty 30×40″ ??? acrylic 

At critique today the class loved the way she looked but the boss aka professor said she was too pretty so I spent today trying to make her less pretty. It’s hard to make a pretty girl not pretty. This is what she looks like now.  I should have known better than to use any pink. . 

  
I decided to use contrasting colors adding a lot of orange with cad yellow light for highlights. I also added some pure phtalo blue for darks. And bits of cad yellow light for  sparkles.  

I also like the area of carpet under the sofa. All the busy stuff. Fun!  

  
This is what she looked like earlier today. A lot of white on the sofa. I do like the sofa with more cad yellow light on it. The yellow in this photo is nickel Azo gold a rusty gold. 

 Thought u might want to see her pretty face that wuz up close. I do actually like her better now. Now to get her a little wilder and crazier. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 457 – My Diebenkorn

Leave a comment

  
Erica WIP 20×30 painted this morning at life modeling session at USC Aiken. She still needs a lot of work I think. Like fixing her saggy right Tata. I am also not enamoured of the greyish flesh color. And twitch her mouth to the left a bit. 
  
Richard Diebenkorn in his studio from an old Horizons magazine. 

 We have been studying Richard Diebenkorn who was an abstract expressionist and a Bay Area painters an influential west coast group starting in the 50s. 
A Beginners guide to Diebenkorn at 

https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/richard-diebenkorn-beginner-guide from his recent retrospective at the British Royal Academy.  

 Coffee by Diebenkorn. 

  
Diebenkorn. Don’t know the title. It is  more similar to my painting I color. 

  
 
Diebenkorn Don’t know the title. 

  Bay Area painter Nathan Oliviera love the way it seems to fly. 

I would love to try Oliviera’s style but I don’t know where you would start. More about Oliviera http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/november/nathan-oliveira-obit-111710.html

Other Bay Area painters are Elmer Bischoff, Thiebaud, David Parks and Thiopolis Brown. 

Thanks for reading. 

Margaret xxx

Day 454 – inky month

Leave a comment

 

Really like this sketch with one blot in my copy book. The guys head. Oooopsss.  

 I actually rearranged the people at the inner bean to fill up my sketch. I started with the girl on the left and then the guy. The other two ladies were actually sitting behind him. Decided to move them. My guy needed company. 

 
This was drawn Monday in class while I waited for the teacher. I like her though I think both of these will look better when I paint them. 

   

 Spent the day hiking all over Aiken looking for pictures to paint.  I cajoled Adrian into modeling on the bench downtown.  She’s a pretty girl. 

And what’s not to love about a pile of hats?!! 

  
And fr the postman NOT to look at the camera and act like he was working. 

  
The parish hall at St Thaddeus where I stood in an ant hill taking photos.  

   I mean you look UP not down dont u?!

  Itch itch itch. 

  
Something about the guy and his truck. Maybe the shadows?! Or all that red yellow and orange?! 

 Thanks for reading. 

Margaret who is ready for a nap xxxx

Day 446 – Fauvism

Leave a comment

  A recent challenge to paint an acrylic self portrait in Fauvism style using a snake of complimentary colors with impasto brush strokes. Impasto is thick paint which can show the method of application. In this case a hog bristle brush. 

This has been a lot of fun. Try it you might like it. 

Fauvism means wild beast. Matisse was the best known painter in this school although Seurat’s pointilism is also a part of this school. Bright jarring colors were used by these artists.  

Some hallmarks of Fauvism are 

  • Strong colors but no black 
  • Colored lines but not everywhere 
  • The artist is painting color even if it’s not what expected 
  • Melting lines 
  • Thick paint 
  • White off Canvas shows thru
  • Not a lot of detail 
  • Faces done roughly 

 
We started with a wash of background color on gessoed hardboard aka Masonite and then drew the portrait with a paint brush using  a complimentary color(red) to the green background.   

This is a color snake using two complimentary colors red and green plus white for tints. These were the only colors we could use.   All the above colors were made from those three colors. 

 After the painting was underway it was ok to add a related color. Such as orange. 


Here is the portrait after two hours painting. I left a lot  of the original red lines showing thru.  

I used the color bluer greens in the shadows and the yellower ones in highlights.  

Thanks for reading.  

Margaret xxx

 

Day 446 – Fauvism

Leave a comment

  A recent challenge to paint an acrylic self portrait in Fauvism style using a snake of complimentary colors with impasto brush strokes. Impasto is thick paint which can show the method of application. In this case a hog bristle brush. 

This has been a lot of fun. Try it you might like it. 

Fauvism means wild beast. Matisse was the best known painter in this school although Seurat’s pointilism is also a part of this school. Bright jarring colors were used by these artists.  

Some hallmarks of Fauvism are 

  • Strong colors but no black 
  • Colored lines but not everywhere 
  • The artist is painting color even if it’s not what expected 
  • Melting lines 
  • Thick paint 
  • White off Canvas shows thru
  • Not a lot of detail 
  • Faces done roughly 

 
We started with a wash of background color on gessoed hardboard aka Masonite and then drew the portrait with a paint brush using  a complimentary color(red) to the green background.   

This is a color snake using two complimentary colors red and green plus white for tints. These were the only colors we could use.   All the above colors were made from those three colors. 

 After the painting was underway it was ok to add a related color. Such as orange. 


Here is the portrait after two hours painting. I left a lot  of the original red lines showing thru.  

I used the color bluer greens in the shadows and the yellower ones in highlights.  

Thanks for reading.  

Margaret xxx