Painting Intensive Class

Last month I had the opportunity to take a three week long online painting intensive class through SAIC, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. We could choose to focus either on acrylic paints or oil paints, so I chose acrylic. I had used acrylic before and had a bunch of paints, but I hadn't done many paintings with it that I was proud of. I wasn't sure exactly how to control the paint and get it to do what I wanted, and I just hadn't used it much. Most of the paintings I've done lately have been watercolor, which work much differently, both when it comes to the precision I can achieve with the smoothness of the paint and the process of layering colors. So I knew this would be a good opportunity to learn and expand my exposure to some relatively new media.

The way the classes were set up, we had three hours together on a video call every weekday. The first hour was made up of instruction time, and in the second hour the teacher took turns meeting individually with us students to discuss our goals and our upcoming projects. The rest of the time we worked on our paintings, and on a few of the days, the teacher's assistant gave a demo. We watched demos on Renaissance vs. Impressionist color palettes, flesh tones, glazes, underpaintings, and canvas stretching.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but one of the first things that hit me that first day and week was how new I actually was to all of this.

New Experience #1 - Canvas

On the first day we did a small project using mixed blacks (mixing different colors to get black) on canvas. As I sketched out a small still life, I realized this was the first time I had really tried painting on canvas. Now I had painted on canvas before, but it's been several years and... let's just say I did not keep those paintings. I had never really tried hard to create a work of art on canvas before and that realization kind of surprised me. I had to get used to the way that the brush and paint move across the canvas rather than paper.

New Experience #2 - Mixed Blacks

The idea of mixed blacks was also relatively new to me. I had mixed colors to get black before, but I didn't know there was an actual term for it. I also learned more about its benefits, such as the different warm and cool tones it creates when you add white to it. For example, in the painting I did, I only used "black". One was a bluer black, and one was more purple. At it's darkest, the difference isn't very visible, but it becomes more apparent when the white is added for the grayer tones. It creates more interest than just using pure black, and then you can pick a "black" that fits into the color palette you've chosen.

New Experience #3 - Palette Knife

I had always seen those things around and now I finally know what to do with them. They're really handy to mix paints with rather than just using a paintbrush, because then you don't get big clumps of paint stuck in the brush that either gets wasted or comes out in the wrong, unmixed color when you started painting. I have yet to try painting directly with the palette knife like Bob Ross, however.

New Experience #4 - Different Circles

This one has nothing to do with art but it was another realization I had - that I've somehow barely interacted with Americans outside of Christian or homeschool circles. That was probably a good experience to have before I go back to the U.S. for college next year...

New Experience #5 - Very Experienced Classmates

Don't get me wrong, I've been highly impressed by the works of my classmates in previous art classes. However I've also been used to being at the "top of the class" so to speak. But when the time for the first critique rolled around that first Friday and I saw some of the projects my classmates had produced... let's just say it was humbling. Honestly I was a bit discouraged at first, but then I realized it's just a good reminder that I may be good, but I have a long way to go and lots to learn. It was a good reminder to be humble and a good motivator to keep learning and practicing.

New Experience #6 - Not Sticking Strictly to a Photograph

One of the goals I had in this class was to not simply copy a photograph. I wanted to keep using references, of course, especially since my style is more realistic, but I also wanted to add my own ideas to the painting and create something new. I've practiced this a few times, but I focused more on it in this class. For the first week's big project, I worked almost completely from my imagination, and for the second and third week's big projects, I based them off of photographs but used my own color palette and lighting. For a mid-week painting of my mom and I when I was little, I combined two reference photos - one of me and one of my mom - to create something new. I used my own color palette for this one as well. Also, after a demo on creating flesh tones, I tried painting my own hand, and I used a much rougher technique where the brushstrokes show through more and aren't as blended. This looser, less realistic style was new for me.

New Experience #7 - Storytelling

Since I often stick to photos, I rarely have a story behind the artwork. The second week we focused on storytelling, and one of the days specifically we used patterns as inspiration. I painted a suitcase as the last remaining object in an empty room, and on the suitcase is the pattern of my bedspread. The new bedspread that I got for my new bed for my new room when we moved. In that way the pattern represents moving for me, and I noticed too that the blossoms on the pattern give the idea of new life and new beginnings, which I thought was fitting. While I'm not super pleased with how the painting itself turned out, I like the idea, and it was a new approach for me.

New Experience #8 - Color Mixing

While I had mixed colors before, I gained a lot more experience in it through this class and learned to be more intentional with the colors that I chose. For the first week, every day, we mixed at least five new colors and picked our own names for them, which was a fun little exercise. I also worked on creating lots of different flesh tones and had fun creating various other colors.

New Experience #9 - Gamsol

It had been on class materials lists before, but nobody had ever told me what it was used for so... I had it lying around, but I never used it. Apparently it can be used to thin your paints rather than just watering them down, and it helps the paint to flow more smoothly across the canvas. It also can be used to thin your paints down to be used in glazing, or to build up lots of thin layers of paint on the canvas.

Here's all the projects I worked on!

1- Color Swatches: Arctic Waters, Deep Sea, Wet Sand, Seaweed, Sunburn

2- Color Swatches: Field Green, Poppy Red, Sky Blue, Dirt Path, Night Sky, Lemonade, Lavender

3- Color Swatches: Carrot, Eggplant, Lemon Popsicle, Raspberry Sorbet, Dried Cherry

4- Color Swatches: Dusk, Chalkboard Green, Toothpaste, Peaches n' Cream, Blood Orange

5- Color Swatches: Various flesh tones

6- Color Swatches: Various colors

7- Practice: Renaissance colored apple vs. Impressionist colored apple

8- Practice: My hand, practicing using flesh tones

9- Week 1: Still life using mixed blacks

10- Week 1: A monochromatic painting of water, practicing tonality

11- Week 2: Painting of a window based on a classmate's description of a photo

12- Week 2: Me and my mom reading Bunny My Honey, a favorite childhood book (watercolor)

13- Week 2: A suitcase painted with the pattern of my bedspread

14- Project 1: Picking, a painting on how sometimes we only choose to see the worst in ourselves even when there's beauty all around

15- Project 2: A Neighbor Visits, a painting of a seagull who landed on our kitchen windowsill the week we moved in, seemingly "welcoming" us to his city; both the open view in the background and the sounds of seagulls rather than heavy traffic were pleasant surprises we discovered

16- Project 3: Afternoon at the Dock, a painting I did based on the same photo I had done a drawing based off of last year, because I thought it would look great in color and I wanted to experiment with choosing my own colors and lighting

This was a very helpful class and I'm very glad I had the opportunity to take it. I hope to keep experimenting with the new things I've learned and learn even more!