Paint Night 13: Penguins!
I had a quandry over the weekend; there were two paintings I had never seen offered before, and, as far as I know, are not being offered again anytime soon, and they were on the same day. Now, granted, they weren't at the exact same time so I could have done both, but that's a lot of painting to do in one afternoon, especially given we're trying to completely redo the extensive rock beds around the 39 rosebushes in our front yard, plus weeding the veggies and other chores so: I had to make a choice. After some unnecessary wibbling, I went with the penguins:
The teacher turned out to be the same woman who had done the Santa Monica Pier from a few weeks ago. Thankfully, I liked her. My only complaint is she takes awhile to get going, first introducing herself and finding out where people are from, and other sorts of chatty bits, eating into painting time. It so happened that both this class and the Pier painting went over - quite a bit over, in fact, but the teacher SWORE I was just unlucky to get that two times in a row and that it doesn't normally happen. I guess I just happened to choose more demanding pictures?
Anyway.
We started off with basics: After finding the horizon, about 2/3 of the way down, we painted the top half black and the bottom half white - or mostly white. She said if we found plain white too glaring, we could give it the slightest tint of blue or purple or gray. I went with blue. By then the black was (supposedly) dry - mine was; the teacher had emphasized adding a bit of water as we painted the black to make it thinner and dry more easily. Anyway, then we painted the mountains in the background - larger on the left, smaller on the right.
Next came the hard and frustrating part: the Southern Lights. Although clearly I wasn't alone in my fussing, because she ended up helping quite a few people and this is really where we started to fall behind, timewise. We were supposed to make a light blue (although we were encouraged to not over-blend the paint so it would come out in different shades of blue) and paint on some streaks in sort of random locations. But mine dried too quickly, and I wasn't able to blend it in and make it as wispy as it was supposed to be - any attempts only made my stripes a bit wider without really doing anything else.
The teacher told me to blend with a wet brush, but this only took off the center parts of the stripes, which were apparently still a little wet, while doing really nothing to the edges, and only adding a whiteish film over everything from my now-dirty brush. I hated it.
However, by the time we'd added a yellowish green to the sky, and blue, yellow, light purple and black reflections to the "snow," I felt like my sky wasn't so awful. (Which was a bloody miracle, because while I was flailing around with my Southern Lights, we found out our plan to get takeout pizza for dinner was foiled because the place was closed for a week, which meant everyone was flailing around making other plans and asking me what I wanted, and then I was trying to put in a Panera order for three of us on my phone, while simultaneously trying to listen to the teacher, and, like I said, it was a damned miracle I got anything done!) Oh, and we added blue shadows to the mountains. The small white dots you see in the center are where we mapped out the outer edges of the penguin pair, and the overlap point in the middle.
We carefully painted out the outside edge of the penguin shapes, and filled the entire area in with white.
Next came the light yellow patches up by the face, and a few highlights on the body, along with some blue shadows on the body. We technically only had about 5 minutes left at this point, so while I was keeping half an ear out for the teacher's directions, I honestly went ahead on my own, focusing on the model for how to paint the details - the black lines for the wings and facial features, the beaks, the feet, etc. It was hard painting with a fine black outline over textures created by the Southern Lights/reflections underneath. The teacher suggested her own touch, painting the eyelids closed for a cozy, snuggly look, so I went with that. And we painted a few horizontal shadows under the birds. The last thing I did, before we had to hurriedly end class ("You can keep painting but you can't paint here!" she chirped at us) was to dot on a few stars. I only did a few, unlike the zillions in the model, because dinner was arriving - other people went and picked it up from Panera and Chili's - and like I said, it had already gone over time by about 20 mins. So, here's the final result:
Damn aurora australis and all that wispy blending. So hard!
The teacher did say she'd take requests, so I'm debating whether I might ask if she'd be willing to teach the other Sunday painting I did not have time for. Hmmm. (Side note: spiffikins, if you're looking for a bubbly and helpful teacher and don't mind the East Coast time, look for Melissa Borges.)
The teacher turned out to be the same woman who had done the Santa Monica Pier from a few weeks ago. Thankfully, I liked her. My only complaint is she takes awhile to get going, first introducing herself and finding out where people are from, and other sorts of chatty bits, eating into painting time. It so happened that both this class and the Pier painting went over - quite a bit over, in fact, but the teacher SWORE I was just unlucky to get that two times in a row and that it doesn't normally happen. I guess I just happened to choose more demanding pictures?
Anyway.
We started off with basics: After finding the horizon, about 2/3 of the way down, we painted the top half black and the bottom half white - or mostly white. She said if we found plain white too glaring, we could give it the slightest tint of blue or purple or gray. I went with blue. By then the black was (supposedly) dry - mine was; the teacher had emphasized adding a bit of water as we painted the black to make it thinner and dry more easily. Anyway, then we painted the mountains in the background - larger on the left, smaller on the right.
Next came the hard and frustrating part: the Southern Lights. Although clearly I wasn't alone in my fussing, because she ended up helping quite a few people and this is really where we started to fall behind, timewise. We were supposed to make a light blue (although we were encouraged to not over-blend the paint so it would come out in different shades of blue) and paint on some streaks in sort of random locations. But mine dried too quickly, and I wasn't able to blend it in and make it as wispy as it was supposed to be - any attempts only made my stripes a bit wider without really doing anything else.
The teacher told me to blend with a wet brush, but this only took off the center parts of the stripes, which were apparently still a little wet, while doing really nothing to the edges, and only adding a whiteish film over everything from my now-dirty brush. I hated it.
However, by the time we'd added a yellowish green to the sky, and blue, yellow, light purple and black reflections to the "snow," I felt like my sky wasn't so awful. (Which was a bloody miracle, because while I was flailing around with my Southern Lights, we found out our plan to get takeout pizza for dinner was foiled because the place was closed for a week, which meant everyone was flailing around making other plans and asking me what I wanted, and then I was trying to put in a Panera order for three of us on my phone, while simultaneously trying to listen to the teacher, and, like I said, it was a damned miracle I got anything done!) Oh, and we added blue shadows to the mountains. The small white dots you see in the center are where we mapped out the outer edges of the penguin pair, and the overlap point in the middle.
We carefully painted out the outside edge of the penguin shapes, and filled the entire area in with white.
Next came the light yellow patches up by the face, and a few highlights on the body, along with some blue shadows on the body. We technically only had about 5 minutes left at this point, so while I was keeping half an ear out for the teacher's directions, I honestly went ahead on my own, focusing on the model for how to paint the details - the black lines for the wings and facial features, the beaks, the feet, etc. It was hard painting with a fine black outline over textures created by the Southern Lights/reflections underneath. The teacher suggested her own touch, painting the eyelids closed for a cozy, snuggly look, so I went with that. And we painted a few horizontal shadows under the birds. The last thing I did, before we had to hurriedly end class ("You can keep painting but you can't paint here!" she chirped at us) was to dot on a few stars. I only did a few, unlike the zillions in the model, because dinner was arriving - other people went and picked it up from Panera and Chili's - and like I said, it had already gone over time by about 20 mins. So, here's the final result:
Damn aurora australis and all that wispy blending. So hard!
The teacher did say she'd take requests, so I'm debating whether I might ask if she'd be willing to teach the other Sunday painting I did not have time for. Hmmm. (Side note: spiffikins, if you're looking for a bubbly and helpful teacher and don't mind the East Coast time, look for Melissa Borges.)