Reddit reviews Classical Painting Atelier: A Contemporary Guide to Traditional Studio Practice
We found 4 Reddit comments about Classical Painting Atelier: A Contemporary Guide to Traditional Studio Practice. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Watson-Guptill Publications
Hey! I graduated from IB in 2007 and did standard and higher level art, got a 6 out of 7 (I slacked a bit towards the end, senioritis). I then went on to do a 4 year Illustration program and graduated with a BFA. I hope you go down a similar path, art is very fulfilling and you seem to have some passion. Don't feel discouraged if your work doesn't yet match your ideas, you need to crank out tons of studies and eventually you'll feel yourself improving in leaps and bounds.
What IB really wants to see from you is a consistent theme. You've got a lot of experimentation in different media which is great, but I recommend you get some inspiration from art history. Just straight up copy old masters, if you see an old painting that you enjoy try to duplicate it and you'll understand it in a way you could never imagine. Try you hand at things like chalk pastels (Nu Pastel is a good brand), charcoal, watercolor, maybe even some oil paint. Avoid using small scratchy lines all the time, try flipping charcoal on its side and making broad strokes or get some powdered graphite and apply with a brush. A quote I try to live by: "Big artists use big brushes."
Find one or two types of media that really appeal to you and run with it, struggle with it, learn from it, study it, become bored with it, master it. I did digital painting for the most part which was sort of cutting-edge at the time and scored me some originality points and still to this day I work in that style.
Contemplate what you think is an interesting theme to make a series of artworks about, go to a local art gallery or museum and see how other artists approach themes. Get inspiration everywhere and write it down, lyrics in songs, things on the news, ideas in the shower. I did 'Creation / Destruction' as my theme and focused on the duality of the two through mythical stories of gods, warfare, self esteem and perception, yatta yatta. You're in high school, remember that this is a good time to just noodle around, try crazy shit, don't worry about being judged for failing, failure makes you better because you learn what not to do. And originality isn't the most important thing, imitate the art you love and once you feel you understand it you can tweak it.
Here's the biggest secrets I never knew in high school. Artworks are broken down into a few essential components, if you keep these concepts in mind you'll do much better.
The books I'd recommend are:
The Story of Painting
Imaginative Realism
Everything by Andrew Loomis (Free!)
Classical Painting Atelier
View these websites:
http://www.linesandcolors.com/
http://www.googleartproject.com/
http://gregnewbold.blogspot.com/
http://beardedroman.com/
http://www.artrenewal.org/
Good luck! My website is www.caycegoldberg.com so feel free to contact me if you want critiques or advice or whatever. And don't let the stress of IB take you down, stick through it. It's a tremendous struggle but it gives you a huge leg up on life, you'll appreciate it forever.
Thank you! I've been painting for what seems like a long time, but that's all relative, I guess...I'm in my late 20's, to give you an idea. I do have a degree in painting, but something that helped me a ton were these books: 1 and 2. Read those and you're well on your way! :)
For a first painting this is good, to get a better likeness pay attention to proportion. Check and recheck the eyes, nose and lips, if you get the relationship(measurements) between them right the rest of the picture falls into place. If you really want to improve check out these books, they'll give you some great pointers:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lessons-Classical-Drawing-Juliette-Aristides/dp/082300659X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346328001&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Classical-Painting-Atelier-Contemporary-Traditional/dp/0823006581/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1346328001&sr=8-3
Good luck and keep at it :-)
Gotcha. The canvas paper is fine, I would use Liquin by W&N for medium, along with the paint thinner for very thin washes.
This book and the other WG textbooks on classical realism are very good if you want to go in that direction. Might be a good supplement for the ol' college of YouTube.
PS I <3 Bob Ross, he was the man.