My Painting Lesson Diary

Lesson 2: 16 July 2003

Janet taught me to look white spaces around the objects which I am copying from the books. It is called negative shapes. If your drawings do not have the right negative shapes, they do not look right, she said. I concentrated on drawing negative shapes only during this class. After I did 10 of them, Janet asked me to copy from the book with paying attention to the negative shapes.

Lesson 3: 23 July 2003

Today, Janet asked me to copy a bear from upside down. Placed the image which you are coping upside down, and you draw from legs with using basic shapes and negative shapes techniques which I learned before. I was amazed how much better you can draw with looking the object upside down. Janet said the reason why is that you observe things more carefully if the object is upside down. I think that lesson gives me not only how to draw but how you look or think things in different ways.

Lesson 4: 30 July 2003

Today, I learned how to draw eye, nose, light and dark shading technique. After Janet told me how to draw eyes and shading, my drawing has more life. It is so interesting to hear her explanation about the nose. - What we e are seeing is shading. Janet said that now I can move on to whatever I want to draw. I am so excited about the news! I want to draw flowers.

Lesson 5, 6: 06 & 20 August 2003

I tried my first life drawing today. I picked purple flowers from the garden for this. It was not easy to set all the proportion right. Janet said when I drawing flowers, it is better not to use dark pencil, so I can create delicate aspects which flowers have. Lesson 6, I learned "Gesture drawing" which means you will not draw exactly as you see, but more loosen way of drawing. Unfortunately, the image did not come clear as it should be, so there is no example for gesture drawing.

This is my first oil painting. Firstly, I painted the background with Yellow and Purple. These two colors made dark brown color as a background. Paint green on leaves. A week after, paint white petals. Yellow and orange bits. And the following week, I painted shades of petals with dark blue and white. I painted Green with dark blue on the leaves, and with cotton ball wiped the color out to make line on leaves. I add another purple on the background, and this purple made the painting to be more interesting. I think that purple is really great color to mix with other color.

This is my second oil painting and I am very happy about this. However, the colour does not look the same as real one. The width of the canvas is 40cm. Firstly, I painted darker petals and leave lighter petals. After I finish darker petals, move onto lighter petals. I really enjoyed painting this one. What I learned most from this painting are brush strokes. I realised how the brush strokes affect on the lighting effect and depth or distance of the object. From last painting and this painting, I understand more about blue color effect on the painting. I used Crimson, Burnt sienna, Lemon Yellow, Ultramarine, Titanium White and Gray and mixed them. The middle part was very difficult to apply those whites ad dark rose color bits. Janet helped to fix it.

This will be my next painting. The buddha head was my partner's request. We have nice Antique Asian cabinet in the living room, and we think that it will be good match with this cabinet. The canvas which I use are so dry, so Ann suggested to apply white wall paint on the canvas before drawing. so I did. I used the Buddha head statue which we had in the living room as a model. In the back of this Buddha head, Water Lily and its leaves will be painted. I want to include flower/s whatever I paint, so I came up with this idea. After I draw them with charcoal, Ann applied Aquamarine mixed with Turpentine on the shade of statue.

I am very looking forward next week lesson.