Hello dear readers!
Happy (very belated) New Year!
Apologies for the lack of posts. I spent much of my break from school doing a ton of writing and running around the city with visiting friends (and in doing so found much inspiration for my book project... more about that in future posts). And now I'm two weeks into the semester and already neck deep in projects and class work.
Most of my courses run for the entire year with a couple exceptions. Alas, alack, we shall not see Viktor around this term (you will instead hear stories about Mirko who runs a sort of professional lecture series class), Marshall and Carl have joined forces to create our marathon (10am-4pm) book class, and I'm auditing a class in gouache painting.
All of the work I did for Viktor's project was rendered using ink lines and really thin washes of gouache paint. On the spectrum of water-based paints, gouache falls somewhere between watercolor and acrylic. I've been using it like watercolor paint, but gouache has the ability to create lovely thick matte surfaces. So I figured, why not play with it some more and learn to use it "properly"?
My professor is an older British fellow from London with an accent like the aging rockstar in Love Actually. Needless to say, I adore him already. During our first week, he just wanted us to start playing with the paint and assigned us to do self-portraits. Aaaaaand, go! I had no intention of doing anything serious and produced something entirely silly...
My homage to Norman Rockwell: Triple Self Portrait with Bunny Slippers
Grin.
During our second class, he wanted us to play with the paint and practice color matching. He brought in a whole bunch of small Monet paintings and told us to replicate them. I chose a painting of a winter scene (I believe the title is "The Magpie:) because I wanted to play with using the paint in thick layers. It's a medium that can be built up, so why not build it up?
The Magpie by Me
