Reproduction - David with the Head of Goliath (caravaggio) - 6 hours
Prior to taking Painting I this semester, I had made a total of 3 paintings since k-12. One was a watercolor reproduction for the art for architects class; the others were crappy acrylic paintings I made in 2D design. I took zero art classes in high school (the closest I came to art classes were my drafting classes), and even in middle school I don’t remember painting that often.
I entered Painting I with a fair bit of nerves. My limited experience in painting gave me no reason to think that I would be any good at it. My initial forays into the medium tended to confirm my initial beliefs. On the first day of class, we had to paint from still life sculptures in the middle of the room. Mine… well mine sucked. After that, our first few paintings were from still life, fruit in this case. One was a 2-hour alle prima, the other a grey scale->colored glaze.
Then, something happened–I started to “get it”. Our next assignment was an emotive self-portrait. I opted to channel the low point in my life that ultimately led to me coming to school here six months later. I have issues looking at myself, and the human face is a bear to deal with. I still had no clue what I was doing as far as color went. However, by the time I had finished the portrait, things were starting to come together. I had saved what was, at first, a very mediocre drawing and painting. (Right now, that portrait is hanging in the temporary art displays in the main building. I cringe every time I walk by it.)
After that was the skeleton. I’m relatively certain that the prof is just trying to kill us–I mean, skeletons are hard, what with all the bones and weird angles. However, my initial painting in the burnt sienna was pretty decent, and layers upon layers of paint finally brought round a decent product.
Now we’re working on an abstract painting in class and a historical reproduction out of class. This is my historical reproduction after 6 hours. It’s not done–it will eventually look close to the image pasted on my board to the left (as you look at the photo). This is the underpainting, what I’m using in lieu of actually drawing with pencil upon the canvas. The toga is too high about the waist, and it needs folds in the fabric. David needs a face, and I need to work the dark tones into his flesh better.
Looking at what I did in six hours and looking back at how bad I was before, I think I’m relatively pleased with my progress in the class. During our evaluation for the skeleton paintings, my prof said that while my portrait was good, I had made the leap from a Painting I student to a Painting II student with the skeleton. I doubted that I would make the jump from II to III with this one, but who knows? So far it’s looking pretty decent.