Today I turned in my 5th project in my painting class. This assignment was different from the others, in that we didn’t spend weeks working on one larger painting, but instead we completed 8 smaller paintings. These were done in the impressionist style, painted only in natural lighting, we were only allowed to spend 4 hours on each painting and each needed to be done all in one sitting. We completed 4 indoor paintings and 4 outdoor paintings. “En plein air” painting is the term used for outdoor painting, generally in the impressionist style.
I’m really glad we did this project. It was refreshing and didn’t get boring because we could paint outside the studio and the paintings were quick enough that you didn’t get bored with the subject. It also required that you make quick decisions and determine what aspects of your set-up you could relate in the painting in the time frame and which aspects were left to be handled economically. It was really enjoyable, is something that I would totally do often outside of painting for a class, and I really feel like I improved significantly throughout the project. Just compare my first ones to my last ones!
These are in the order that I did them by category. I definitely think the last one of each is way better than previous ones! I actually did both of the last ones yesterday. Way to go procrastination.
I definitely need to still keep improving. I’m happy with my progress, but I still need lots of practice with painting glass! It’s been hard to try to master so far.
I could improve a lot on my outdoor ones as well. I definitely like the last outdoor one best out of all of them. 🙂
I thought it was really nice and relaxing to paint in Audubon Park. It is peaceful and is nice just to get to enjoy the wonderful weather. It was also really interesting to sit there and observe everything going on around the park and hear random bits of everyone’s conversations. I would definitely recommend you do it sometime.
Here are all of our paintings spread out in class for critique, pretty, huh?
Click to see painting project #1, #2, #3, & #4.
Oh wow Caitlin these are so pretty and I love your aesthetic. They look great against the wood floor and I especially love how the white paper looks torn. Good job! You should use them to decorate your new apartment. They’d look great all together on a wall.
Thank you! This is definitely my favorite style of painting. I definitely think that they will make it up somewhere in the new apartment. 🙂 We start with a really big sheet of thick paper that we gesso and then “tear it down” into the sizes we need. So they are torn actually. I do like the way it looks, especially against the wooden floors. I just can’t decide how to frame them. In normal frames with mattes or in some kind of frame where you see the white part too? I can’t decide!
One of my first thoughts was about how “wet” your water looks in the outdoor scenes. Beautiful work!
I agree with Annie that they look great on the wood floor. One of your earlier works was on the floor; apologized for that, but I thought it looked great like that. I wonder if that might point you to a good way to frame them. Old wood? If you are able to make your own frames, your dad could find you some old wood, I am sure.
Thank you Neva! I’ve thought about the old wood frame idea. Drew and his dad used to make frames out of old barn wood, so maybe we could make some for them. We don’t have the tools in New Orleans though, so we’ll have to see. I’m sure I’ll post pictures once I get it figured out so all can see. 🙂