Update on Progress

My first art class just wound down. It was basically a class about doing oil glazes over an acrylic underpainting. By the end of the class I had finished two pieces and am about halfway finished with a third piece. This class was through the Houston Art League. All in all the class was a great way to get back into the swing of color theory and some rudimentary drawing/painting skills.

Overall, I started relearning how to see properly again. This may seem strange, but when I have been completing many art projects on a regular basis, I start to see things differently, literally. The one summer I was in an art immersion program, by the end of the five weeks, I would look at a tree and not only see green leaves, but different shades of brown, violet, blue and red within the leaves. Eventually I start to see shapes differently. Shapes become values and hues rather than the general object. What my brain has been programmed to identify, say, as a "chair" starts appearing as general smaller shapes that make a larger, complex shape.

I signed up for the same class again this summer. I think after the end of this summer I will most likely not take it again. Although the class is fun, and the instructor is a very nice man, it does have a lot of limitations. The one technique he is teaching is basically wet oil in very transparent glazes over dry canvas (whether it is dried oil or acrylic). I really want to be working more wet on wet. I want the paint to be able to take on a life of its own. This technique is pretty rigid, where I want my work to be looser. But for right now I am learning a lot about paint, and really building my skill set. It feels awesome.