There is a difference between painting something, and painting a picture of something. Painting something means that you are standing right in front of it; you are experiencing it for yourself and you can interpret it however you see it. A picture tends to limit you to paint what the camera sees and the quality of ink your printer uses. What I want is to really make art that comes from me. I want to experience the autonomy of art and the pride you get from knowing that this was all you.
Of course, painting a picture of something is a necessary step towards achieving art that is entirely your own. I'll start with painting other artists' work (whether they're painters or photographers), see all the oil painting techniques that are out there, and practice developing my own style.
Through this genius hour project, I hope to improve my abilities in painting shadows (which are pretty much nonexistant right now) and textures, as well as practice my color mixing. I will paint at least one painting for each of these skills. Bill Martin's Guide to Oil Painting has great exercises that will help me master each of these skills. In addition to Bill's awesome blog, I have a friend who has been oil painting since they were 8-years-old, so I can also turn to them for help (for the sake of anonymity, I will be referring to this friend as Stephanie).
Each painting I successfully complete is how I will be measuring my progress. For the first and second weeks, I will focus on accurately mixing colors and painting shadows. I have always struggled with translating colors that I see into colors from my palette, so these two weeks will take longer than my last week of learning to incorporate texture into my art.
Once I have successfully refined the basic skills of oil painting, my ultimate goal is to paint a scene that is directly in front of me so that I get to be the interpreter for my audience. Only then will I consider that to be "creating my own art", which may or may not appeal to the rest of the world, but I will take pride in what me, myself, and I are able to accomplish.
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I hope you are not having as terrible of a day as I am.
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Ahhhh oil painting's so cool! I know your brother has done some awesome oil paintings and so have you, so I'm excited to see you develop your artistic skills. What do you think you'll be drawing first? Will you be painting a painting a week while learning techniques from Bill Martin?
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea! Have you considered whether you're going to paint still life, nature, people, etc.? Also, I would check out a guy named Bob Ross. He used to do a show on PBS, I believe, and he would just sit and paint. Everyone loved him because it was so obvious he loved what he was doing. I'm sure you would enjoy it too :)
ReplyDeleteThis seems like a really cool thing to learn how to do. Do you already have experience with oil painting or is this completely new? Anyways, I can't wait to see how this turns out. Good luck!
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