Reflection on Animal Painting

Exercises

We have been working on our animal paintings for a long period, and we have now finished our final painting. The first step of this process was to do exercises and look at the shape, shadows and proportions of our chosen animal’s face. We did this by looking at negative space, making scribble drawings, putting the face into geometric shapes of all sorts and blind contour drawings. These exercises were very useful to me during the process, because after having made the final draft I took some time comparing it with these exercises. When doing so I spotted mistakes both in the dark and light spots and the shape of my animal. I saw that I had to improve on the shape of my animal face when comparing it to the geometric shapes, looking at the size of the shapes (the triangle in the cheeks and the rectangle on the nose and forehead) and the angle of the shapes.

We also did exercises with paint, so we became more familiar with some of the options we had when it came to the painting techniques we could use. This was also a very useful exercise, because I learned how to make it look like fur by using dry brush- technique. I really liked the technique I used for background on my final piece, because it gave a very cool effect.

Since I finished the drafts quickly I was allowed to practice only painting the eye of the tiger, close up. I was really happy with all the details in the eye and I think it looked realistic since I added a lot of white reflecting in the eye. I was also happy with the fur! I didn’t use the same dry-brush technique as I did in the final painting, but I managed to make up my own technique for it to look realistic. I got a lot of compliments for my eye-painting and Mrs. Jardin even used it on the Facebook page for our class! :D

Feedback

I got feedback during the process both from my teacher, Mrs. Jardin, students from 10^th and 9^th grade, and my parents. The official time for constructive feedback was when I had drawn a sketch for the final painting. Mrs. Jardin, Cara and me agreed that the angle of the face was wrong, and that the tiger’s face was more titled in reality. We also noticed that cheeks were too big on my sketch and that the eyes should be both bigger and longer up on the face. After having viewed my sketch with Mrs. Jardin and Cara, I looked at the exercises with negative space and geometric shapes as guidance when making the final and improved sketch.

During the weeks we painted with chalk, watercolors and paint, I got feedback from my fellow class mates continuously. The mostly had positive feedback, but Tom came with some points, such as that I should change the color, paint out the stripes earlier in the process and that I should repaint the background because it was too “noisy”. I thought about this while proceeding with my work, though I did not always agree.

I showed my parents some pictures along the way and they gave me short feedback. This was also mostly positive feedback. My mom said that she really liked the shine in the eyes on the chalk drawing, but that she thought the right cheek looked a little bit too big compared to the head. My dad thought the cheek was way too big, but as I tried to copy the shape and size on the photo, so I didn’t change it too much.

Decisions

During the process I made a lot of choices concerning how I made the background and the baby tiger. After having played with several possibilities on the exercises and drafts, I decided to make my tiger in realistic colors and the background in blue since that is a contrast color. At the end of the process I regret this, because looking at the other’s unrealistic paintings I think that would have made a more interesting painting. I tried mixing brown, red and white with the gold/beige color, and this seems to have worked fairly good when I am comparing it to the picture I looked at. I used a lot of time with all the colors on the nose of the tiger, and I am very happy with my results here! I think the “dabbing”-method I used here along with the many different tones of brown, beige, white and pink made the hair on the nose look realistic and as close to the truth as possible. The only problem with the beige color I used was that a lot of other students also liked this for their animal. Towards the end we ran out of this color so I had to try and make a similar color on my own or water out the beige color from the container to use the last bits of it.

For the background I used one of the techniques form the paint exercises. I think this made the painting interesting, because the background got very rough and that is a contrast to the smooth baby tiger face with furry, blurry, round edges. I used black on the background with the blue to set a sharper edge to it and to pick up the black stripes and eyes in the face of the tiger. For the background I also added some watered out black paint, splattered over diagonally. I got some feedback on it that it was too much since the background was already noisy, but after having added the stripes I noticed that it went across the invisible “line” the position of the tiger formed; from the downer right to the upper left corner. I think this was interesting so I am happy I added the black in the background.

At the first few drafts I made almost all of the body of the tiger, but before the final draft I changed this so only the baby tiger’s face was visible in my painting. I think this made the tiger appear cuter, and I could also add some of the details in the eyes and on the nose when having it up-close. This was also something Mrs. Jardin said was smart from the beginning of the process.

I decided not to have so many details in the fur on the body of the tiger, but focus on the face. I did this out of two reasons; to save time, and so that people looking at the painting would focus their attention on only the face. All I did for the fur on the body was to add some stripes that looked like an attempt of fur for it not to look so flat and life less beige, where as in the face I used a lot of time dry-brushing with white and beige for it to look like realistic fur. If I had time I would perhaps had liked to change the fur on the body, but if I had to chose one thing to do half ways in the painting, I am happy I under prioritized. 

Animal Exercises

These are some of the exercises we did before starting our animal-drafts and playing with color. The skribble drawing helped me loosen up and focus on the tones. it helped me to loosen up and not be too worried about the precision of my drawing because when i use a pen i wont use time to erase etc, and will there fore not have that many expectation on the precision part of it. This is a good exercise for the toning because i can add layers  where it is darker, until i get the tone i want. Also when i use a pen i dont have to use time blending out my colors to get an even tone.

The negative space drawing helped me look at all the angels of the outer lines. When i look at the negative space it will helpe me draw the figure more accurately.

Drawing my animal in geometric shapes will help me see this new shape as something i am familiar with. It is also easier to see things compared to one another and to get the proportions of the face right.

Iwas very happy with my blind conture drawing! Amazingly enough my lines connected and the proportions were right. I can promise that i did not look once at my paper, so this is definently the best conture drawing I have ever done. Done conture drawings forces me to look at the outer line of my object and really pay attention to how the line moves. 

Three Fruits

Sorry! Managed to delete this post… but here ill repost it ;)

For coloring and shading I used chalk, charcoal and color pencils, one for each fruit. I used three different fruits for this piece: a pineapple, a carrot and a green pepper. I used some time before I started to set them in a position I was pleased with. I tried making the set up a little more exiting by leaning the carrot on the pineapple, with the pepper in front holding it up.

I decided to color the pepper with chalk because I thought it would be an easy and effective way to make the surface “shine” or reflect the light as it does in reality. I used the colored pencils for the carrot, because I knew the orange colors would do well with the green color of the pepper. I also thought about doing the pineapple with colors, but I thought it was too black and white in reality to really make any difference, so I used charcoal for that instead.

I really enjoyed working with the chalk and I would defiantly like to use that technique later for other pieces. I think I have to work some more on layering with the colored pencils and to keep my drawing light using charcoal.

I found it hard to draw all the details in the pineapple with charcoal and the pineapple might have been a little bit too dark, so that was a little challenging, but I am really happy with the way it turned out. 

Baby Tiger Draft

Today in class we drew a draft of our favorite animal, in my case a baby tiger. Our task was to focus on the colors and the texture. For this picture I liked my background idea where I tried to do something that could represent the environment tigers live in, but I should have used more time to color it in and finish of. It is good that I used many colors and was experimental, as this just is for practice, but it was kind of random that the head should be green and blue and then the body orange or realistic. I could have toned the head more and made the brown areas darker to get a more 3D effect.  I liked the eyes and the shine in them but bigger and lower makes cuter ;) I would also like the head to be more zoomed in and not get that much of the body. 

Baby Tiger

New project coming up!! These next weeks we are having a new project in art class. We are painting or drawing our favorite animal faces. Since my favorite animal is the tiger, and I am born in the year of tiger following the Chinese calendar, it was only right that a beautiful baby tiger should be my goal for this assignment. This class we found our animal picture online and started doing some exercises in Art Rage to experiment with different colors and try out different things. These are my best results for Art Rage:

Final Still Art

So after a long process with endless thumbnails, first and second drafts and learning about composition, this is my final product.

I am sad to say that I am not at all happy with my final image. I think my two previous drafts were much better. In this last on I think my sixth figure, the beam of blue across the whole page, was to dark and came to much in focus. I think it actually covered some of the other objects that were meant to be in focus. On this image I put the olive glass in the front instead of the front, but I think the picture was more balanced with it in the back because now I got this big empty space. Also I chose not to color in the clock and leave it white, but I think I should have at least made some reflections in it. It could have been an idea to have for example a quote there. It was hard to use chalk for the olive glass and there were a lot of colors in there that I had difficulties painting. The composition could also be improved I think. I know I wanted to have it “stand” on a surface before I started but I think maybe I should have put some of the objects on the top of the paper, “flying”. One thing that I am happy with is that I used a lot of techniques in this image. I used line variation, toning with both colors and black and white. I also made the clock come more in focus by having a blue shine come from behind it. I wanted to use contrast colors in my image, and I think that worked, but it was a lot of dark colors.

I apologize for the inconvenience that the pictures are wrong way or tilted. Tried for hours to fix it, but couldn’t.. L

Drafts Still Art

We are now in the process of making our still life picture with three of our own objects, and two from the class room. Today we made a draft of our image. I used the time well, and was able to make two I was quite happy with. I like how I have different colors over the whole image and that the colors were fairly light. I liked the way I made the olive glass in line variation. I did this because there were so many colors in the olive glass that I dint think I would have been able to capture well, and therefore ended up with a corny-looking glass.

Very happy with these drafts, hope the final one will be as good! J