Painting Class - Lesson one: Realism...

Tuesday evening we were assigned a project in my acrylics class... building up realistic images using a series of glazes.  our subject:  candy!  we were sent to a pile of candy - each person grabbed a handful (or a jarful as was the case in some instances) and went to work.  We sketched and drew and came up with some sort of composition.

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Once we had our sketches figured out, we started to draw it on the canvas (24 x 30) and roughed in some color.  This gives us the chance to see the composition and decide if anything doesn't "work" - I was pretty pleased right off the bat with mine - I figured that it's candy - I decided quickly not to make a big deal of it... just ignore the actual "sizes" of stuff - blow it up "huge" and try to create some interesting lines...

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By the end of the class I was starting to build up some glazing on some of the areas in the painting.  The "green" hard candy on the right had turned blue... and the "tootsie pop" wrapper on the bottom right was starting to take shape.  I have a L-O-N-G way to go on this but it's a fun start to my adventures in acrylic painting... I was freaked out at how quickly the paint dries (in the past I had used watercolor which just gets "wet" again with water or oil which takes 452 years to dry) - there's something I can buy called a retardant that will help slow that drying time though. 

I plan to put images of schoolwork in progress on here so that I can remember the way they progressed.  I have a history class on Wednesdays (no reason really for blogging that I can think of) and on Thursday I have a ceramics class! - going back to school is so much fun - I am 3 "real" courses away from a degree - the history class is one of them - biology and a "special project" type course round out the three - once they're done I will transfer my credits and get my Bachelor of Science degree from Middle TN State University (where I did 99.999% of my schooling)  -  I plan on flying to TN to walk across the platform - but that's in the future.  Today... I have a painting of candy, Christopher Columbus and a "theme pot" to worry about... tomorrow is another day!

(I'm a bit worried about my knitting - with all this schoolwork and these new creative distractions it's going to slow down...)

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