Bob Harvey’s Crane - 18 x 14” oil on canvas
My professor Chad Hughes has been such a great painting teacher over the last few weeks. He taught us how to draw over the last two semesters, and is very good at applying the basic building blocks (color, light, shape, value, texture) to whatever we’re trying to paint.
We’ve had some engaging discussions about techniques, and his years of teaching provide a lot of perspective - especially when I often feel like I’m peering at a small dot of light in a very big and confusing cave.
A lot of first-year students, like me, get caught up in capturing every detail of a still life because we’re very insecure about our skills, and want to convey the message that we understand what we’re seeing through over-doing a painting.
But there’s something more to the obsessive detailing, even when I can’t pull off photorealism to the nines. I know my drawing skills are average, that paint is much more forgiving than pencil and ink, and that whatever part of my brain that’s unable to locate itself geographically (no sense of navigation/location) is also responsible for the problems I have with perspective, scale and proportion. Still, when I set out to do major detail work like the painting above, I find myself transfixed by the littlest things.
The way light bounces off sequins that are overlapped by shadows, the fuzzy texture of fabric, the smooth beauty of wood grain - there is something about capturing these things we rarely notice in real objects that calms me down and drowns the “FAILURE IS INEVITABLE ON THIS PATH” voices out.
I also like trying to make pretty things, because there is still a part of me that doesn’t believe I am capable of creating or capturing beauty - those rotten leftovers of my strange upbringing. Every time I make something I actually like to look at, I forgive myself a little bit more for being weird, having a temper, acting like a freak, disappointing myself or other people. Writing this on a blog is as vulnerable an act as showing the painting itself, if that makes any sense.
The next few projects I’m attempting are going to be hard. One is the biggest painting I’ve done yet, and very complicated, so I don’t know if I’m ready to pull it off. The other might get me into trouble, which is always appealing.
Process photos and descriptions of the still life are here. Thanks for reading.
(p.s. any sexylanders or porn industry folks - i really need a good, realistic strap-on for the next painting. holler if you wanna trade!)