Hello and welcome to week three of my journey through the Milan Art Institute Mastery Program!
This week, we continued to build on our skills with a still life drawing in charcoal, focusing on the way light hits different planes. After that, we moved onto painting a colourful portrait using oil paints.
The 8 brushstroke portrait was a challenging project, but it was exciting to see how we could apply what we learned about plane shifts to the human face. The goal was to place one brushstroke down for each plane shift on the face without blending, which is easier said than done!
This is the infamous "Monster Portrait," and it was a great opportunity to experiment with using warm and cool tones in different areas of the face.
It was interesting to see how the oil paints interacted with one another as we layered them on top of each other. Mixing the right hue, tint, and shade was a challenge, especially since the reference photo had a lot of unnatural colours. But with every brush stroke, I learned more about the potential of using both oils and acrylic paints in my work.
One of the most important lessons I learned this week was to trust the process.
Even though the portrait looked quite ugly in the beginning stages, I persevered and trusted that it would come together in the end. And it did! This is something that the Milan Art Institute emphasizes a lot, and it's a great reminder to keep pushing through even when things seem difficult.
I've started with the group mentoring portion of the program, which means I'm getting feedback on my paintings as I complete them. This will be incredibly helpful as I continue to refine my skills and work on implementing feedback.
Overall, week three was another challenging but rewarding experience. Each week seems to be getting harder and more uncomfortable, but I'm excited to see what new challenges week four will bring.
