Yesterday...

Yesterday was Tuesday and our goal was to bring in our still life objects, and if we wanted something personal, to bring those things in. I brought a lot of things in, and whittled them down quite a bit adjusting as necessary as I started drawing a small sketch. I had an undergraduate student bring in some velvet for me as she works for JoAnn Fabrics, which was helpful. I had my doubts that she would come through, considering at first she thought I was talking about cake when I asked her for some red velvet, but you have to trust someone sometime, and she did come through. 

Everyone mostly set up still life objects that are part of the department stash. Victor said that everyone needed to scale down quite a bit. 


The class divided into guys side and girls side right away with the guys creating a very masculine set up with a huge animal skull and blue fabrics. 


Sharon, V's grad assistant brought in something silver, some huge teapot or similar, but aside from her and myself, we were the only ones who brought something in. This is typical. 


We set up, contemplated, then Victor did power point on the techniques a little more, mostly on mediums and oils, such as poppy seed, linseed oil, etc. He pretty much lost everyone (though I could be wrong) when he started talking about mixing your own black oil. 


And now, I remember and I think everyone pretty much understands why I left these techniques and adopted my own version of medium (which is the standard- linseed oil, turp --but not turp- gamsol---and damar varnish ---that being 1/3rd amounts on everything) and used this mix on canvas. I still think that my paintings will hold up in comparison to the general populace of painters, esp. ones I know here in St. Louis -- which by the way I just learned that a very ...I'll say popular ...painter and contemporary uses just plain ol' epoxy resin from HOME DEPOT on heavily layered work.... tsk....tsk.... 


Back to the adopting my own techniques... I left the ones that Victor is teaching us because they are very in-depth and it is hard to understand the components of how everything goes together. Again, I could be completely wrong, but I think the class was so overwhelmed when they got back in the classroom (with 40 min. left in class to draw as Victor suggested) that most people just said "**** it" and left. 


I continued on with the preliminary sketch that I had started before power point, and started on the real drawing until 2 p.m. It took a long time to adjust and I did create a cropping frame and set that up in a stationary point on an easel. I taped my eye shut....yes, I did ... and lost some eyelashes as a result, I'm sure. 


I think people (students) are not really sure how to start and are maybe overwhelmed by the drawing/ or drawing the complicated still life set ups. Maybe they thought that 40 minutes just wasn't enough time. Some continued sanding and or gesso-ing their boards. For me though, I know what is next, which is nice, and there's always something that can be done in 40 minutes- even if it's just a preliminary sketch. I found out at least that my painting was going to go from horizontal orientation to vertical, which was completely unexpected, and that I had too many small objects and had to take many things out. I have several objects in my set up that will be extreme challenges.