Three larger pieces
Tuesday, October 5th, 2004I finally got around to breaking out my dad’s digital camera, so here are some of my larger paintings. (Funny, for someone who doesn’t generally enjoy painting, I sure do a lot of it.)
I did this early last year in Studio Survey. It was supposed to be in the style of Paul Gauguin, hence the rather bright colors. (The in-your-face yellow background is my favorite part.) I’ve always had mixed feelings about this painting, although I know it turned out well. It was from life, so there are a lot of very similar pieces floating around out there, albeit in a variety of artist’s styles. Myself, I chose Gauguin because it seemed to be the one in which I could get away with the flattest colors and the most minimal blending of paint. In other words, it seemed to cater to my artistic weaknesses. Please forgive the carpet showing around the edges; I’ll replace this with a better picture when/if I take one. (acrylic on canvas paper stuff, 16×20″)
This is the pop art self-portrait I did in Studio Survey near the end of last year, in the style of Roy Lichtenstein, one of my favorite artists. Once again, I loved the flat color. I decided to stick with Lichtenstein’s favored primary color scheme as much as possible, although that blue in my shirt is awfully dark. I had a lot of fun with this one, despite the craziness of doing all those yellow background dots with a pencil eraser. I’ve decided I like the Ronald McDonald hair, which I had trouble with at the time, since Lichtenstein didn’t paint any red heads (or any women with such free-form curls). Someday this will have a similar portrait of my younger brother as a companion piece. Again, please ignore the carpet. (acrylic on paper–ew, 18×24″) (Interesting to note that not long after I painted this, I gave up on novel-writing, probably for good. Blame very severe burnout–and perhaps I jinxed myself.)
This is an old and still technically unfinished pastel painting that I think I began the summer before sophomore year. The horses are finished, but in the photo, there’s all this bushy vegetation around them that I never got around to doing, because I got bored and couldn’t make it come out right. If I get desperate enough for something to work on, I may come back to this, but I can’t see that happening any time soon. I haven’t done such a large pastel painting in quite awhile and I’m really starting to miss it, since pastel is my all-time favorite medium. It combines the control of drawing with the brilliant colors of paint (with, I think, far easier blendability). I really need to get back to pastelling. (pastel, 19×25″)
I still have four more large pieces left to post, so expect another entry in the next few days.
