As my independent project approached the last couple weeks of work, I had my last road bump to deal with. Not long after finishing the field layer of the mural, I was set to paint an array of flowers over the green grass. However, that weekend, I suffered a serious muscle strain which halted my work as I was unable to do certain tasks without feeling intense pain. I rarely get sick or injured, so it was a majorly new thing for me to suffer something that stopped me from doing some of my favourite things, and it was certainly unexpected that something like this would happen right before my project comes to a close. Out of time and having lost a couple of weeks to recovery, I had to improvise once I finally felt well enough to paint. I realized that my only options were to paint extremely simple masses of flowers or to enhance the field without them. I experimented with painting flowers in a simple way and didn’t like how it looked. I then considered having less flowers but adding more details, but a new problem actually arose with the flowers looking out of place in comparison to the rest of the painting, taking away from the mountain. What I ultimately decided to do was enhance the field by making it brighter and giving it more life. Though I wish I had had more time to incorporate flowers into the field in some way, I am happy with the final result of the painting and feel like I learned a lot from having to improvise in the end. My artist statement will explore in more depth what this project has meant to me, but I will say here that is has been extremely rewarding and I’ve learned so much from doing such a new and unique type of painting. The size, subject matter and style have all pushed me in new ways to an extent that I never expected—the size most of all. I hope that it will fit well in the space it’s been made for, bringing a calming and pleasant sight to all those who see it in the Mental Health and Addiction Centre’s waiting area. I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to do this project and I will carry the experience I’ve gained from it with me in all my future art endeavours.
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Nearly three months ago, I wrote a blog entry called, “Getting Acquainted With Digital Art,” shortly after learning how to use Procreate. Since then, I have continued to frequently draw on my iPad. As I’ve been working with digital art more, I’ve been finding more of a consistent style. In the beginning, I was sort of fumbling around and just trying to do the cleanest line art possible, filling in colours and shading modestly. I wasn’t happy with where this method got me, however, so I tried a more painterly style that matched my methods in traditional art.
The result of my more painted, less perfectionist style was a somewhat cel-shaded style of colouring. Sometimes I use rough blending and other times full-cel, or even a mix in one piece. For some pieces I go almost completely line-less and for others I use varying styles of lines. I’ve been really happy with how my work has been coming out lately, given this new, more consistent style. It’s really important for an artist’s work to have a sense of identity. Of course artists can experiment or use a wide variety of styles, but it’s always great when an artist’s work can be almost instantly recognized due to a strong sense of identity in their work. I’m particularly happy that not only is my digital work beginning to have a sense of identity, but that it also matches the style seen in my traditional art. I still have lots of improving to do in digital art. I struggle with line work still—not knowing when to make lines messy, when to make them clean, how heavy to make them, etc. It’s something I’ll have to experiment with. I also have to allow myself to truly sketch in Procreate more. I find my sketches almost always turn into full pieces, because it’s so easy with digital work to just pop in a new, clean layer. However, sketching is really important in order to practice different poses, lighting, etc. without having to spend too much time on one exercise. These are all things I’m going to continue working on so that I can keep working towards a digital style with consistent methods and final products. Looking at digital artists online, so many of them can create piece after piece that have an absolutely identical style, showing that they know the process to go through for the final product they want. I’ll get there in time but it will take lots of practice before I can get really get to know digital art. With the grass painted, the mural is nearly done. Painting the grass was actually more difficult than I expected, as I had to create an effect that showed the texture of the field, while also accurately depicting the distance of it. I did this by mixing lighter and darker tones of green, giving a natural look of flowing grass. I also painted some distant trees behind the hills, using different dry-brushed tones of green. Next I’m going to be adding some flowers to the field. I’ll have to keep in mind the perspective of the field so that the size of the flowers stays consistent. I’ll also have to keep the lighting in mind and ensure that the colour of the flowers doesn’t stand out as too bright among the natural colours of the rest of the mural. I’m excited to be reaching the final stage of this mural. It has been a long process with many problems I’ve had to solve. I don’t paint landscapes very often—in fact, I’ve only done a few in my whole life—so doing not only a multi-layered landscape, but one of this size, has been a very new experience for me. I can already see a few things I would have done differently, and that is knowledge I’ll use the next time I paint a natural landscape. This week, I finished painting the clouds behind the hills on my mural. You might recall that I wasn’t sure last week if I wanted to make these clouds round and fluffy like the ones in the sky, or more wispy like they are in the reference I’m using. I decided that I could make the clouds wispy while still maintaining the style I’ve been using throughout the mural. I used a light blue base and went in with dry-brushed white paint until the clouds looked soft, thick and matched the rest of the mural’s style. Despite my previous struggles with allowing the three canvases to flow together, particularly at the edges where they meet, I found that doing these clouds wasn’t too difficult—possibly because of the simplicity of them, or because I’ve not blended the canvases together multiple times. It’s likely a combination of both and I hope that I find the next layer of the painting just as hassle-free. Next week I’ll be starting the grass in the fields below. I think the grass will present an interesting challenge, with matching the tone of the mural and not making the green too bright, as well as with figuring out how I’m going to go about the texture. As some of the field is far back, it may not all be detailed, but I might want to work in some individual shards and I’ll have to see what I like and how to execute it. The last three weeks—one of which was spring break—I completed the mountain portion of the mural. I was surprised by how much I liked the style that came out of it, as I wasn’t entirely sure the last time I left off what how I wanted the mountains to look and how I was going to achieve the style I decided on. I ended up simply doing what felt best until I liked it, then using the techniques to carry the style through out. I ended up with a style that was somewhat abstract, blending in some places, with some rough strokes that stand out for emphasis. It was difficult matching colours between paintings, but overall the mountains went smoothly and turned out well with a style that I’m really pleased with. Next, I’m working on the clouds above the field, and I have to decide if I want to make them the same round and fluffy clouds as the ones in the sky, or if I want to make them more wispy. If I make them wispy I’ll have to figure out how to paint them stylistically, so I’ll likely start with some digital testing to see what might look good. After that I’ll be doing the undercoat for the field and planning how I want it to look digitally. March madness has certainly been given a new meaning this year, with many things being tossed in the way of the world which we are all trying to understand and cope with. For me, in the subject of art, this meant taking my work home after the school closures, making my independent project truly independent. Although it took a while to get my hands on the supplies needed to work on my 3x3’ canvases at home (a standing easel, some colours and the biggest soft brush I could find at the store), once I got what I needed I got to work, slowly but surely. In the last two weeks I have finished the clouds throughout the whole mural, as well as the base for the mountain below. Working layer by layer has been successful so far and I haven’t had to worry about going back and adjusting any of the elements I painted behind the mountain. The mountain, however, will be the first element of the paintings that I have to be very careful about carrying through each canvas. I’ll be using mainly grey tones to create the shapes and slopes of the mountain and these need to connect and make sense throughout the mural, in both colour and shape. This is going to be difficult and likely one of the longest parts of the painting process, especially since the mountain is the main focus of the mural. Expect many updates on the process of painting the mountain, as I’ll definitely be trying lots of methods to make it work best. This week I began painting the clouds in the sky on each canvas. Wanting to having a consistent style, I planned out how I wanted the clouds to look throughout the painting. However, when I took to the canvas, the clouds went a different direction stylistically, and instead of having soft and wispy clouds, I opted for having round, thick clouds. At first I was hesitant about the look of the clouds, but I considered the fact that I’m going for a less realistic style and decided to continue doing the clouds the way I was. Just as I worried about, connecting the canvases to one another did present a challenge. I was able to line up the placement just fine, but I had to carefully adjust the clouds that crossed the canvas lines to match in colour. Next week I’ll be starting the main focus of the painting—the mountain. I’ll have to pay careful attention to the style and its flow throughout the three canvases for this part, as its the element that brings the whole mural together. I’ll start by planning how I want to unify the style next week and hopefully by the end of the week the mural will start looking truly connected.
Working on my trip-tic painting this week has been a learning process to say the least. When planning how I was going to paint, I hadn’t thought about how tedious it might be to do one painting at a time, going layer by layer. It requires pulling out one painting and doing a layer with the colour I’ve mixed, then pulling out the next and doing the same, making sure the colours match by the end. I also have to make sure that the paintings are blending with one another at the seam, so when I finished the sky layer on all three paintings, I laid them out all together and blended the seams. Even having a single painting out is a challenge, though—with the canvases being 36x36 inches, changing between them and putting them on an easel is a process. It’s been fun regardless, as I’ve been using a big sponge brush to do the sky throughout, not focusing too much on details yet. Next week I’m adding clouds, and I’m curious to see how consistent I can make them look, since I’ll actually be drawing objects that require consistent technique. I’m excited to see how everything will come together when the clouds are added—the trip-tic will really start looking like a unified painting.
Recently, I've been viewing a lot of digital art on social media. It's incredibly different from traditional art, particularly in the area of colouring. You have the ability to make the colours on your drawing completely even and kept within the lines, using the tools of whatever software you're using. A few years ago I got alcohol markers to achieve more even and precise colouring in my drawings, similar to the digital work I've seen, but a year later I finally asked for a drawing tablet for my birthday so that I could do digital art.
I began by drawing in the software very similarly to how I draw traditionally: sketch, line, then colour by working lightest to darkest. However, I ended up letting my drawing tablet collect dust for a while, as I wasn't very satisfied with the work I was producing. In January, however, I plugged my tablet back into my laptop and decided to try drawing with Photoshop—a software I had put on my laptop a while ago, but had only used for drawing once. I abandoned digital art after having difficulty, even in the best drawing software, making smooth lineart. I felt discouraged and figured that maybe digital art just wasn’t for me. But when I tried again, I decided right off the bat that I was going to commit to making something I was proud of. I did my lines over and over until I was happy with them, and consulted a friend for tips about colouring. I used the same techniques that I do traditionally, translated to digital tools. I ended up being really satisfied with the final product and posted the sketch, lineart and finished piece to my social media (first two images below). The response was positive and I did a couple more small pieces in January. My tablet died shortly after, completely failing to connect to my laptop. I had an itch to do digital art again, however, and when I eventually replaced my laptop with an iPad, I downloaded Procreate and waited impatiently for my stylus to arrive in the mail. The day it came I ripped into Procreate and made three rough drawings in the first twenty-four hours that I had it. The last two weeks have been filled with constant drawing, as I have the software and my stylus with me all the time now. It gives me the opportunity to sketch all the time, and to turn the sketches into full drawings easily. I’m learning rapidly and finding the medium to be a really useful tool. With every drawing I’m challenging myself a little more, learning out shadows and lighting in a way that I couldn’t with traditional art. My most recent piece was one of the most challenging pieces of art I’ve ever done (final image below). I pushed myself with everything: perspective, lighting, detail, background and shadows. These are things I near never include in my drawings, but with tools like layers, opacity and duplication, I could test things out easily. I never believed I would or even could be a digital artist, but it’s proven to be an accessible and fun medium. Without it, it might have been a long time before I ever did something with perspective and lighting the way that I did. By no means am I thinking of putting aside traditional art—I still enjoy and am more skilled at painting in particular—but focusing on digital art has proven to reap rewarding results. I want to continue working with procreate and trying new things until I can finally feel confident in saying that I’m more than acquainted with digital art. This semester, I started independent work for VAM 30. For this course, we were assigned to think of project we could work on throughout the entirety of the semester, completely independently. For my project, I chose to create a mural for a client. Throughout high school, I’ve been developing my skills in painting at school and at home. However, I haven’t really challenged myself when it comes to painting and I wanted to take VAM 30 as the opportunity to do so. Originally, my client for this project was going to be the school, creating a mural for the academy area, but I was given the opportunity to instead create a mural for Alberta Heath Services’ Centre for Mental Health and Addiction. I welcomed this opportunity openly, as I preferred the content that would be included in the mural, and the work done at the centre is very important to me.
Because of this change from my original plans, I had to coordinate with AHS when the semester began. This process took the majority of the first three weeks of the semester. The process involved a lot of emailing back and forth to ensure I knew the client’s desired content, dimensions and spacial requirements for the mural. Going through this process of collaboration has taught me a lot about working with clients in the art field. I have only ever done art for other people on small scales—I’ve never had to work in the confines of specific requirements. In the future (as I do hope to be doing art as a career in some form), when working with clients, I want to be more efficient in my communication with them, in order to have the information I need right off the bat. During the process of getting information, I was mainly brainstorming in the first two weeks. I collected references and put them into a folder so that I could decide what I wanted and mix some elements from my chosen pictures. By the third week I had a strong idea of what I wanted the mural to look like, and with the dimensions finally chosen, I was able to create a rough concept in Procreate of how the painting will be laid out. Being a trip-tic, I added lines on my digital canvas to ensure that I was not adding small or important elements where the canvases split. However, in the actual painting, more planning for this will be required, as the digital concept doesn’t include every little detail that will be on the mural. Everything is finally ready to go and I will begin painting on Monday. I'm really excited to get going, as I know this project will be a process of a lot of challenges and lessons as an artist. I've never done anything quite like it so the experience will be totally new—I've done series, large paintings and landscapes, but never a trip-tic and certainly nothing this large. Being the sole focus during my time in academy this semester, it will be interesting to see how doing one project for the next three months will affect me. I will continue updating my process and challenges on this blog in order to give insight into what doing this project will be like. If nothing else, it's definitely going to be an undertaking. |
About this blogOn this blog page I'll be posting about my progress in achieving art goals, and how I'm learning new things and improving as an artist. Archives
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AuthorLeah is an eighteen-year-old aspiring Canadian artist who enjoys drawing, painting, and photography. |