Week 3 - Rocks

Today the instructor gave us a demo on how to paint rock textures. I missed the first 10 minutes but it looked like she did some scraping and some salting. I was sorry to miss the scraping, since I haven't had much luck with that so far.

I picked my rock subject last night. It's a really nice rocky outcropping in Kinsale, Ireland. I especially love the sky.


I did a quick practice painting during lunch:


I felt it lacked color but some of the shadows were starting to take the form of rocks. The grass was pretty flat and I didn't have time to try for any details. It was a good study though, and better than what I did in class.

Tonight during painting time in class I did this:


I was really unhappy with this effort. I totally overworked it, the edges are all wrong, and it's very muddy. A big part of my problem was that I worked on it in sections instead of doing the whole thing from start to finish. I'd take one part from light to dark and then do another. It made the whole thing lack cohesion, and when I tried to add it later I felt like I just ended up adding muddy paint. The sky is a little bit nice, but on the pale side.

I was so frustrated by my class painting that I came home and started a new painting. This turned out much nicer, though it still has a lot of places that aren't very rock or grass-like. I am going to have to paint a lot of rocks and foliage before I get the hang of them. I do like this painting though, definitely the best of the day:

Also, just for the record, the colors in the paintings don't show up very well in my photos. Probably the late night lighting. At some point I will take photos during the day and replace these.