Monochromatic Paintings

For their first painting, students in Honors Painting approached a still life using only different hues of brown. They had access to two colors of paint plus white, and I asked them to look for all the different values in the still life, and try and capture them in this limited palette. 

 

For many of the students it was their first time using acrylic paint, as well as their first time trying to draw a still life from observation.  Other students have painted many times before. 
First, we talked about creating a strong composition by zooming in and making sure to create interesting negative space shapes.  Ideally, the subject matter (objects) should touch at least two edges of the composition. Students drew their composition on a gessoed toned board, using vine charcoal.



Next, students wiped away the tone of the paper with a rag, to plan out and observe where their highlights and lightest values would be.  This is a common technique used by oil painters, but I wanted the students to try it using acrylic. 

  
Next, students mixed colors for and painted the numerous values they were seeing.  The goal was to end up with AT LEAST 4 different values of paint on each object, and to capture a sense of the relative lights and darks within the composition- as in, this vase is darker overall than this pear.
 








In conjunction with this project, I shared images and videos with the students related to under paintings, and how (especially) oil painters have used under paintings for hundreds of years and beyond to set up a successful painting with contrast, and to save money on the more expensive colored pigments.

Charcoal Drawings of Still Life Objects

Students in Art 1 worked for 2-3 weeks on a charcoal drawing based on observing still life objects.  We studied the tradition of Vanitas till life, dating back to the 16th century.  Objects in the still life symbolize the spoils of life, the five senses, and the brevity of human experience.  

Students also learned the traditional chiaroscuro technique where you tone your paper to create a middle value and then add darks and lights from there. In the case of using charcoal, we erased out all the highlights. 

To Begin, students drew thumbnail sketches in their sketchbook, in order to find a good composition. To do this they used their prior knowledge from the small pencil compositions project. They looked through a viewfinder and drew 3 different compositions.

 I had the students fill in the negative space shapes in their small compositions, so they would be able to see the structure of the drawing a bit better. 
Next, my students selected the composition they felt was the strongest, toned their paper with vine charcoal, and enlarged the small composition onto large paper using a simple grid and observation.  



They then took their time to create a contour line drawing of each object.

  
Students then observed the still life carefully in order to find the lighter values and use their eraser to pull them out.  They then added darker values using both vine and compressed charcoal. 

 

The final drawings are very beautiful, and in many of them you can see the struggle evident in the process of making this type of work.  Students spent several days re-hashing and reflecting on their their process and experience.  I will post about that next.