We started off in monochrome, with a fairly complicated still life. It probably would have been better to start off with bottles or something easier than rope strewn around a pulley and a log sculpture, but starting off with a still life so challenging really threw all of us into the deep end, so we were forced to learn oil paints as quickly as we could. My first painting was pretty terrible, and I was determined to do better.
For the second painting, we did a simpler still life of apples in color. I should have made my apples much bigger and the end result is three very tiny overly saturated apples. To fix these supersaturated tones, I learned to mix complementary colors and apply them thinly over the first coat of paint, and I managed to tone down the background somewhat. Still a crappy painting though.
For the third painting, I made my own gesso board and made sure it was large enough to get the scope of detail that I wanted. I like the way that the edge of the table really looks like an edge, and the inside of the cut, upright apple. This is where I layered paint on the thickest, which looks much better than the washed out watercolor-y effect I was getting before by hesitating to apply paint thickly. It also gets across the decaying state of our still life. I don't think this painting is amazing, but I do think it counts as definite improvement.
Throughout these iterations, I felt I was approaching oil paints from a completely different perspective: instead of throwing on colors willy-nilly, Genevieve taught us how to use color and hue in a measured, controlled way. I never thought about the importance of putting on a wash that was a completely different color from the background/backdrop or the concept of mixing complements into the background to make the foreground and similar stand out.
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