Hello and welcome to week 9 of my journey through the Milan art Institute Mastery Program!
This week we tackled realism on a small scale (small scale because it would take way too much time and certainly too much of my patience to do it on a large scale).
As always, there was a drawing component and a painting component. For the drawing, I chose to do a portrait, just to hone my skills and give myself more portrait practice. I’m quite happy with how this turned out.
We were meant to spend 5-6 hours on this- but I only spent 4. I felt that at 4 hours it was as done as I was going to get it.
I never really think that I can do realism, but the that’s the whole point of this program- to build the skills to be able to paint or draw in any style any way that you like.
The second assignment was to paint realistically, or create a tromp l’oeil, with the subject matter to be painted at life size. Between my reference and scale tool, the Martini glass was either going to be slightly bigger or smaller than life size, so I went with slightly bigger. We painted on panel so we could easily blend and so that the texture of the canvas didn’t ruin the illusion of it being real.
I’m fairly happy with how this turned out, I didn’t see a whole lot of different colours in my reference photo, the lemon was a bit greenish and the ice cubes glowed a brighter turquoise than I could get.
Hot Tip: Get Good BrushesOne thing that I did discover was the limitations of my brushes, I purchased just three brushes in different sizes, just to be able to get started with the program, but they were so cheap- the bristles are starting to stick out in all directions. I think it’s time to invest in better brushes, so I’ve purcahsed the Milan Art Institute’s Mastery Brush Set, which seems to be good value compared to how much I’ve paid for just one brush in the past. So I’ll let you know what I think of them and how they hold up. |
Also, this week I tried to paint more frequently, as I was beginning to build up resistance to getting back in the studio, and I wouldn’t say it was an overwhelming success. I painted on Sunday, in the hopes that it would be easier for me to get into the studio on Wednesday, and what ended up happening was….. I didn’t get into the studio AT ALL. I spent the whole day on the computer, getting through a backlog of my to-do list, which, to be honest wasn’t as important as getting through this program and building up my skills.
So back to the drawing board on the whole resistance issue. 🧐
