Three Dimensional Colored Forms

Here are the images you can use while painting your three dimensional colored forms assignment.

Day 1

Files for today’s class

Syllabus

Assignment 1 & 2

Today’s Presentation on Materials, their history, and what are paintings doing?

Today we’re going to go over the syllabus, I’ll give a presentation on materials and a brief history of them and painting, and I’ll introduce the first two assignments which are due in a week and a half.

Setting up your home studio

First things first you’re going to need to set up a place to paint. This can be a little more daunting than it seems. Where you paint should be comfortable as it is a place which you will be sitting or standing for hours. In this video below I go over my little make shift quarantine set up, and the basic things I need to paint. Once you’ve identified exactly what you need to start oil painting, it’s easier to set up a studio anywhere quickly!

Assignments

Painting for Non Majors

Term: Maymester 2020 

Instructor: Jeremiah Palecek 

Assign 1: Artist Research 

Assign 2: Black and White 

Due: May 20th at Portfolio review day 

Assign: 1: Artist Research 

MAKE A BLOG 

For this assignment you will do some basic research on an artist which you admire. You can look at a variety of artists and styles at my paintingcourse instagram stories @paintingcourse . If you don’t have instagram you can peruse a giant list of artists here https://www.painting-course.com/inspiration-1  ( most of those are street art oriented) 

Once you’ve found an artist which you admire. I want you to do some basic research on them. Find out when they lived, where they lived, if they went to school. Maybe they did an interview or podcast. Once you’ve found some information on your artist, answer these questions about them on your blog. This doesn’t need to be long, I just want to make sure you’re looking at painting, and interested in a certain style, and person. 

This assignment is designed for students to identify their own goals in what they are inspired by in painting. This will help later as you will be doing a personal project done in the style of an artist which you admire. 

BONUS!

Dig deep into your research and make a blog that covers a wide variety of categories as outlined in this video 

Assign. 2 

For this assignment you will be making paintings of the basic shapes using only black and white (this works best with ink if you have it).  A sphere, cone, pyramid, cylinder, cube. You can view the accompanying video here.   

BONUS POINTS FOR ASSIGN 2!

This is not required. However painting is a subject where everyone comes in with different skill sets. For those who have had some experience I also want to challenge you to improve your skills. If you finish the first portion of this assignment quickly, then move on to painting from the images below. Using only black and white.   

Make a Pixelated Portrait of yourself using a grid and only black and white . For this assignment first make a grid on your page first. Then, in optimal circumstances you’re going to want to print out an image of your face. Pay attention to the lighting that you use while taking the photo, generally it’s best to have one side of the face in shadow, as this allows for the shadows to show us the forms of your face. Alternatively you could use an app for your phone which breaks up an image into a grid. There’s an app called Photosplit that does this.

If you still haven’t had enough! Create a still life and paint it using only black and white. Set up a small still life using fruit, objects, or whatever you want. Then paint this only using black and white!

Your questions answered!

What if I don’t have black?

If you don’t have black you can mix it up yourself using the primaries. Essentially you just want to use mainly blue, add a bit of red to it (it’ll be purple) then add some yellow to it to make it less purple and more dark grey. Here’s a video I mage about how to do this.

The other question involved how to gesso your surface and prepare it for oil painting. This varies based on what your intentions are, so I’m sorry that there isn’t a definitve answer. However, generally speaking if you use more gesso the chances of seeing some brushmarks is subsequent layers is quite high. If you want a surface which is really smooth you can check out the video below. Here I added a bit of water to my gesso to thin it out, and then I wet sand it smooth. It’s important to use just a little bit of water and spritz it on slowly. Too much water will turn your surface into a mess. So just use a bit of water, and then wet sand the surface. You can do this in multiple layers to achieve an ultra smooth surface. These types of surfaces are good to paint on if you want to do more subtle blends.

Alternatively, if you prefer to paint on a surface that has a bit more texture you can follow the instructions in the video below. Basically what I do is use a criss cross motion with the brush which allows for some texture, but since the texture is uniform across the entire surface it’s not that distracting. If you have a bunch of brushmarks all going in one direction, then when you paint on top of it, these brushmarks can distract from the painting itself.