UNTITLED
9'' x 7''
Acrylic on canvas board
This piece was an acrylic painting used to enhance technique when painting. This piece was meant to demonstrate my ability to utilize paint, create thick brush strokes, clean edges, and color picking skills. We were required to paint the image in solid colors, testing our skills and how we typically use them. It also requires an understanding of acrylic paints and how to manipulate it with limited supplies in small areas. This painting does not have any inspiration as it is an introductory replication piece. Additionally, because this is a replication technique painting, it was not an original composition, coming from a provided photo of a crystal glass.
Process
When I chose my piece, I understood that it would be tough to replicate. I was drawn to this crystal photo because of the colors present, how they lay atop each other. I enjoyed how the hues blended into one another, then having pops of color as they shine through the glass. There are so many colors that can be seen shining through in small crevices of the glass wherever you look, and I find it fascinating. However, it's a very intricate and colorful piece, so I understood that this would require a lot of work when painting. So to prepare myself, I began with practice.
In my sketchbook, I planned out different aspects of this project. Since I was planning on free drawing the piece without a grid, I drew my selected area four times to give myself a sense of proportion and placement of the different shapes and colors, each slightly shifting after every sketch. Additionally, I also mapped out the middle of the crystal and the shape that formed. It's the middle point for the "flower petal" esque shapes of the crystal, and understand it would help composition and with painting the image later. Finally, I created a practice piece in which I painted the photo how I would normally without the criteria given. This gave me an understanding of how I need to shift the very feathery painting style to fit this piece with its thick, solid technique.
From there, I decided to not grid this piece to really challenge myself. In my sketchbook, I broke down parts of the piece and began drawing on my canvas board. Doing this was challenging, and it made finding the smaller details in the image more difficult, however this was challenging in a way I believe helped me hone my skills of color picking and proportion much better than with a grid. From there, I began laying my paint. While working, I decided to place down general colors in areas around the painting, then come back and add more detail and more accurate colors. Painting like this helped me navigate through the hazy and often blending of graphite on the canvas board. However, I decided to jump around while painting, opting out of painting the entire piece it's base colors. I decided to prioritize the main "petals" of the crystals while working, and finishing the outer pieces of the glass when the center pieces of the painting where finished or had good progress on them. Slowly, I filled in the sketch with the paint with solid, non-blending strokes.
Experimentation
While sketching on the board before painting, I found it challenging to properly break down each area of the reference photo because of how large the image is and how many colors were at play. Oftentimes, pulling apart the blended colors from one another would be tough. To work around this, I decided to take my reference photo and break it down from there, outlining the different colors that I could decipher from the image. This gave me a better idea of laying the colors on the canvas, and gave me a reference for the hues when I was painting. Another way I changed the reference photo to help with color picking is by folding the paper to my desired area. I found it hard at times to keep track of which colors were already accounted for and which would be able to be seen on the canvas, and so this, as well as taking a pencil to the photo and breaking down the colors from there, made it much easier to draw.
Another aspect of this piece I found trouble with was finding the right colors. When doing a replication painting, understanding that hues will not be exact is important, however it's a hard truth to get through your psyche. I often found myself frustrated when I would mix the correct color but it would dry and shift it's hue, or placing one paint near the other made it clear the colors were off. To help with this, I did a lot of color mixing, and tried to utilize my paint the best I could. Many of the paints in one area were in a similar shades, so instead of mixing entirely new colors, I tried to use my paints through an entire painting session, only using new paints when necessary. While I had to become very conservative with how much material I was using, reusing paints transferred the consistent shades in the hues from the replication picture to the canvas board.
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Reflection
For this final piece, I believe I did a mediocre job. I ran into problems while working, and for some I was able to create solutions and work around them to fix many mistakes, many problems with the piece are still present. I like my color mixing for this project, however finding the right colors took a lot of trial and error and understanding that the hues not being 1 to 1 is alright. One thing I definitely would have changed would have been the position of the piece itself. I had believed that I had zoomed into the original image enough, but while working I realized that I didn't zoom in nearly enough, and it was far too late to rework the painting and change it. The large reference gave me a large workload to reflect that, and it made it difficult to finish in a short period of time. Additionally, while I was working, I found it difficult to handle the brush at times, especially because I chose such a sizable area where the small brush strokes weren't enlarged nearly enough. This also made it hard to spread the paint around properly, as to much on the small brush would cause it to glob up on the canvas and cause me to start over on the entire area. I tried to get the correct colors and use the paint sparingly, and while that resulted in accurate hues, it also regrettably resulted in the canvas peaking through the paint in some portions. I am not proud of this piece; I did not pace myself correctly and I far overestimated myself. Being able to understand ones abilities and capability is crucial in art, and while pushing yourself is important as well, in a timed setting, planning and realism is critical. I plan to use this experience as a reference in the future to reflect and change my understanding of my skills and relationship to painting, composition, and planning.