For this post, I’m trying out the SquareSpace iPad APP. So far, it’s pretty nice. I can take a photo and load it up to my blog much faster than with my digital camera. We’ll see over the next few weeks which way I prefer to post. (I type so much faster on a regular keyboard!)

What is this a sketch of? Good question. This is my next project that I am working on for a friend. She has asked me to paint her something and provided me with a large canvas and a gift certificate for supplies. What did she ask me to paint? Nothing! She told me to paint whatever I want. It was so hard to come up with an idea. After a few ideas that were not working, I came up with this. Now you need to use your imagination since this is a very rough sketch. The background is going to be a city skyline and there is a person on the foreground. I don’t want to write too much since this is supposed to be a surprise, and she might read my blog! I plan on keeping updates of my progress periodically though. I guess based on how surprised she is, I will know if she ever reads this or not! Well, except that she’s an actress, so she could always just pretend to be surprised…

Sadly, my Pet Portrait class has come to an end. Boo! However, I did enjoy the class a lot and got to try out a new medium. Yea!

My favorite part about taking a community education class was that it focused on learning and what you want to get out of the class. I feel that traditional education is too focused on grades and instead of fulfilling yourself, you are learning the teacher and their expectations and adjusting for that. The learning tends to be a by-product, if it happens, and not the focus. (Of course, that could just be me and my desire for good grades. Yikes!)

Anyway. I’m glad that I got to experiment with Gouache and got some nice artwork out of the process. I also feel that I now have the best animal artwork I have ever done. Usually, my animals are out of proportion and their faces tend to look flat. Even though we didn’t spend a lot of time on animal anatomy, the time we did spend was really helpful. Not to mention, Alison’s (class instructor) tips and tricks for how she deals with drawing different areas of different animals. If you have the time, I would highly recommend Painting the Pet Portrait at MCAD.

The portrait below is of my cat Johnny. I agonized over whether I should show the reference photo or not. (If you see the reference photo, it might not be as impressive!) But since it’s a part of the art process and shows how I dealt with the drawing and painting, I thought it was good to see. This was created using acrylic paint on watercolor paper.

Now that my class is over, what will I be up to next?

This week I started taking a painting class through MCAD’s Continuing Education program. It’s called Painting the Pet Portrait, and it’s taught by my friend, Alison. So far it’s been really fun! We had some pet portrait history and started working on gesture drawings, some of which I’ve posted below. From our gesture drawings, we had to choose one of the animals we liked best and do a drawing on Bristol. Next week, we are painting it with Gouache. I could have posted my preliminary drawing here, but I thought it would be more fun to post it once it’s been painted. Oh, and by the way, the animals that we drew were actually figurines. We did not have horses, kangaroos, etc. in the classroom. (I know, hard to believe…)

For my Independent Study, I wanted to comment on how technology is changing our world and how we are affected by it.

My first piece is titled Communication. I wanted to show that even though we are in close proximity to others, it seems that we prefer to use our technology to speak instead of our voices. For this piece, I wanted to show a more intimate setting where two people had the opportunity to turn towards each other and speak, but instead are barely facing each other and are conversating through their phones.

My next piece is titled Fear. In this piece, I wanted to show how the world is a beatiful place, but by being constantly connected to technology and the negative messages that are sent out daily, people are starting to become afraid, when there is nothing to be afraid of. (I am not saying that there is nothing to fear in the world, but that the fears are growing, while the actual threats are diminishing.)

 

Here is a sketch I created by photographing myself, then tracing my outline, and adding color and dimension.