The Adventures of a Beginning Oil-Painter

For someone who calls herself an artist, I really didn't have much confidence in

my color skills.   I have to be honest and say I did not take one color-theory class

in my life.  The only experience I really have with creating a palette was pretty 

much choosing which four or five of our basic acrylic paints went well together 

so that I could use them on a piece of craft wood or for a sale sign.  I really did want to 

master color theory, so I tried to do my research,

studied and watched other artists and in the process have fallen in love with 

SWATCHING.But still, I felt that I was choosing colors that I loved to create a palette and not necessarily colorsthat would harmonize together in a painting.

Therefore, I decided to take an introduction to painting class!  

BEST DECISION EVER.

I was a bit hesitant on using oil paints because of the use of turpenoid.  

But, it's something that I got used to dealing with.  Safety was, of course, one of the 

first lessons we had so I was definitely less scared to use it.  I would wear gloves every 

single day.  Now, and I don't feel the need to wear gloves every singe time I paint anymore.  

(Getting your hands dirty is part of the fun after all!)  

Our first two lessons were a Color Wheel and a Color Chart.

I JAMMED that Color Chart so hard because I was was really getting into color mixing.

Again, I love swatching!  This chart was what we would be referring to for each painting that we did in the coming weeks.  I was so proud of it!

Here is my first painting exercise.  I could not, for the life of me, get my colors to become warmer for the longest time.  I also wanted to be really precise in my application of paint.   I didn't understand the importance of the allowing the natural mark of the paint to be visible just yet.  (My watercolor background was coming through.)

This is our second painting exercise!  (Forgive me for the horrible glare.)   During the two weeks it took for us to finish this painting, I learned how to blend different colors on the canvas and how to push shadows and highlights.  I was also finally able to allow my colors to stay true to the warmth of the lamplight.

This project was for our Personal Color Chart.  Over Spring Break, we had visit a hardware store and choose paint swatches/colors that had meaning to us.  I noticed that the colors I chose were kind of contradicting because I had a dark, warm, earthy-toned side and a light, cutesy and pastel side.  It was so... me!  We used our professor, Reem Bassous',  Mothermix color-mixing technique to create a balance within all the hues on our chart.   

Here is what my palette usually looked like:  Dried globs of paint around the perimeter with
large splotches of mixed color in the middle.

Basically, we mix a light, medium and dark tone of a color, trying to keep it as neutral as we could.  It can gravitate towards a color such as blue, pink or purple, as long as it doesn't lean too much towards the warm or cool side.  (It has to be just right!)  Mixing just a little of this Mothermix into each color of the palette you plan to use in a painting will create a balancing effect and allow the colors to communicate with each other.  No clashing colors here!

                 

Here is my painting for the next exercise.  I was able to lay out most of my color within the first painting session after watching a demo by Reem.  (So helpful!)    This is an in-progress photo, so you can see the areas where I then added more shadow and highlight.  I'm very proud of my glasses!

This painting, which I call Existential thanks to a fellow painting student, is my final piece for the class!  I tried to go all out.   The exercise was to take different parts of our still life and incorporate them into the composition in an interesting way; not necessarily to paint exactly what we see and how we see it onto the canvas.  We also had to use this exercise to dive into the world of non-local color.  I had so much fun with this composition!  The colors that I originally had planned for this took a 90's turn.  Now it has a 90's cosmic bowling alley color scheme.   (I was digging it and I still am!)

Overall, this class was amazing and it was a vital part of my growth as an artist.

If anyone is able to take Reem's class at Leeward Community College on O'ahu, I 

highly recommend it!