More on CTC contest

Turns out there were only about three paintings of the 80 exhibits selected.  However, the first 3 of 4 prizes went to paintings.  First was sort of a painting.  It was really multi-media, but the artist did paint a self portrait and then glazed that to a piece of cardboard.    Second prize was a really good oil painting, a self portrait.  The artist was a fellow student in my oil painting class.  Third prize was glazed pottery.  Then there was "Anna" which came in as an Honorable Mention.  There was another Honorable Mention, a photograph.  So I guess that means I finished tied for  fourth.   All the other 2D exhibits were photographs or charcoal drawings. I saw over 20 paintings , maybe 30, leaning up against the wall in the pick-up room; one of them actually did well in another college show I entered back in November.   Four of the oil paintings in the pick-up room were my own.

I am really happy;  looks like "trying my luck at watercolor portraits" is starting to work. 

Portrait of Anna made into the College Art competition show

I matted and framed the portrait of my friend Anna featured in my March 15 blog.  I entered it into the CTC art competition just to see if it would make it in.  I entered some oil paintings too, one that I really worked hard on recently, and thought those would be accepted as well.  Well, today, I went to check it out, and the oil paintings did not make it, but the portrait of Anna did.  It was the only watercolor featured, and one of about 10 paintings period.  A vast majority of the entries were photographs and pottery. 
I am pleasantly surprised by the addition of Anna to the art exhibit.  It is by far the smallest painting there.  I think I will continue with watercolors. 

Portrait of Anna

This is a watercolor of my friend Anna.  I did a 15 minute sketch of her from life, and also snapped a quick photograph with a gray backdrop.   I used Winsor and Newton  half pan watercolors on a page from a 5.5" X 8.5" sketch book.   I worked on the painting portion about 2 hours. I used ideas about bright colors from Arne Westerman's book.  The window was also borrowed from his book.

 

 

ITNW1437 (Introduction to Internet) last blog

Dr. P:  I read all the student blogs, and noted that Ronald's blog seemed to be up to date.  I think I successfully posted a comment to Ronald's blog.  It seemed I had to go through several password attempts to get there, but I wanted to post one comment to one student blog.  I know it seems like these blogs are sort of in a vacuum.
In late Jan, I was supposed to provide links to two web sites of interest to the topic in my web page.  I posted a link to Arne Westerman's site, but did not post a link to a second site.  That link is for http://www.melstabin.com/index.html .   One of my earlier posts featured my attempt of one of his "how to" projects.

This week's painting required more time than usual.  It's from a photograph in Arne Westerman's book, but not one of his demonstration samples.  Still,its his composition and his model selection, and his use of light was so much better than what I can do on my own.  Still, I'm pleased with my efforts, and the colors are so much brighter from the paint than they are even in Mr. Westerman's book. 

Not sure why I wasn't able to upload two photographs in one blog entry.  Here's the photograph of the painting I did two weeks ago.   . 

Two more watercolors

Here's two Thursday's worth of paintings.  Both are my own from square one.  You will note that the follow-alongs from demonstrations in the Arne Westerman book were a lot better.  That was because Mr. Westerman used his super artistic abilities to compose the original paintings, using his knowledge of composition and design as well as his knowledge of painting.  The two paintings I am posting this week are based some photographs I took at a Copperas Cove TX high school football game.  You can see I need to work on the dynamic composition, but they turned out a little better than I thought they would.  The color is so much better than the photographs, and I have eliminated a lot of the distractors found in most photographs to get to a single focal point: