Who knew? September 16, 2010

Ah the joys of acrylic. It dries fast, stays where I put it and it smells good. But... oil is more of a challenge  someday  I hope to love them both just the same.Last Tuesday we went to the computer pit and using photoshop we manipulated the image Margee took of each of us and got a minimalist version of our picture. It was fun paying with the colors and effects in cutout and artistic.
Today we took the printed copy of that picture and made a measuring tool to accurately draw  the picture onto the  5x5 canvas. Taking a square sticky note we measured one eye from the inside corner and made a small mark on the paper and labeled it 'photo'. The next thing was to measure off the photo from top to chin and decide how many eye lengths the face had.  On the photo using a pen for better visibility we 'ticked off the lengths down the face'. We counted the ticks and then decided how big the measure could be for the canvas. We marked that on the paper and labeled that 'canvas'. Using that measure we 'ticked down the length of the canvas'.  Now for the fun part. Taking a piece of charcoal (or pencil if you have a very light hand) draw the image using the tick marks as a scale guide.  The real trick is to not name what you are drawing. You draw the SHAPES not the the eye, nose, or so forth. Drawing the little shapes and relating them to the other shapes one gets into this space in your mind and time slows and there is only the line and shape. Once you have drawn all the little shapes and lines, then comes the applying of paint. In my case it is yellow, red and black. I didn't get to the yellow yet but I got most of the red and black ( see photo). The serene satisfaction I felt after class almost makes up for having to do word problems.....