Week 2’s themes were centered around the usual concepts that are key to a basic still life. We looked into value, form, and spacial awareness within a composition while working with charcoal and acrylics.

Our assigned homework included the Introduction and Landscape chapters of Painting Today, the introduction and chapter one of James Elkin’s What Painting is, and two podcasts that introduced artist Stanley Whitney.

These articles and podcasts help stimulate internal thought for me about skills that are useful before the act of painting has even begun. Color mixing, choosing medium, and what you want to say in a painting is just as important as the act of painting itself, and these assignments set the stage for development on skills like this.

5 Terms:

Scumbling: Dry brush technique

Claudianism: Romantic, pastel landscape style characterized by Arcadias of Claude Lorrain

Indexical: something that has a direct connection with its origin

Icon: Something that looks like something else

Symbol: Something that refers to something else

5 Skills

Acrylic painting on paper

Framing work (associated with still life)

Annotation/close reading of live lecture

Value and Proportion work (associated with still life)

Wednesday critique of week one’s work.

The combination of acrylic medium and value scales was a difficult technique to apply onto still life work for me. Because of my perfectionist tendencies, acrylics seem to be an especially hard medium for me to engage in due to their drying time and texture. In a way though, this helped me get more involved in the process, as frustrating as it was. I excited to continue our investigation of still life into an oil medium with more flexibility and varied technique next week!