Last Class Project--Oil and Turpenoid

"Owl" (Oil Paint and Turpenoid)

A month has gone by and my class, Drawing 212, is over. The last class was today. I have posted a photo of my last project assignment from this class. This is actually an oil painting that was done combining paint and Turpenoid. It comes out kind of watery and thin. You can actually move the paint around with your finger or a rag. It was a messy, smelly process, but it was fun.

This class was a good fit for me because it dealt with mediums and techniques I was not familar with. The artwork we did in this class was most focused on black and white, with only a little bit of color involved. If this class had been about graphite and colored pencil, I would not have learned as much because I already know about that medium. But I am not very familiar with charcoal, gesso, pen and oil paint and those are the mediums we used in this class. I have had a tendency to try and use a pen like it was a pencil and it just doesn't work that way. In this class I learned a lot of pen techniques and how to create a good drawing without having to erase. I also learned how to draw with a wash of oil paint and solvent, and I learned about some interesting ways to use gesso. I also learned that the beauty of a pen drawing lies in not controling the pen, but in the lack of control. Some of my best work came from me just fooling around not trying to control the pen, but letting it do whatever it wanted to and experimenting with it. This class was not work, it was play! And thanks to my teacher, I now have a few more artistic tricks up my sleeve!