Well the evening of my first art class in more than a decade arrived. For those of you who have just latched onto this blog, I must say at once that I am not the tutor, I am the student! After arriving early because a) I wasn't sure about the parking and b) didn't know where the classroom would be, I entered the front door of the buildings and immediately bumped into a young lady who turned out to be non other than the tutor herself. She led me through a door with a tiny piece of paper attached which said "Art Class" in very pale letters. Had I been on my own, I would never have read that!
The first job to do was to set up all the tables that had been neatly stacked away in the corner. By now, other members were arriving, and I with a terrible memory, was already struggling to remember their names, in fact even now I can only remember the names of two, but that is not to say that I will still have remembered them by next week! We all give our names to "Miss", and she starts by taking us through the basics about equipment and a few watercolour techniques. There is already an hour of the two hour lesson gone by now, so by the time I finish the initial sketch, there isn't a lot of time left for actual painting. But never mind, I did at least have time to lay in the first washes, the thrill of beautiful watercolours bringing the drawing to vibrant life in front of my eyes. It was no surprise that I was going to have to finish this one at home.
The subject I chose to paint was a photograph of a german shepherd dog. Portraits to me are the hardest things to paint, whether it's people or animals. This is probably because you have to get the proportions right if the finished work is going to look anything like your subject. I mean, if you are painting something like a tree, it doesn't matter if you get a branch slightly in the wrong place, but if it is something like someone's eye, it can be fatal!
I made sure my subject more than filled the paper as that would rule out having to think about the background. Most of the dog's coat was a subtle sand colour with almost black or dark brown areas. I struggled to get the sand colour, but this is where the tutor came to my rescue. She could see that I had a test piece of paper to try the colours out before commiting them to the finished work, which she approved of. "Miss" knew exactly the colours I needed to get the right shade, and gave me a useful tip to fold the test piece at the desired colour and place it up against the photo to check. She was spot on with the tone.
Back at home a couple of nights later, I added more detail to the work, starting with the eyes, which is something I knew I had to get right if anything else was going to work - I think it's the first thing you look at in a portrait. Fortunately the photo was very detailed and allowed me to reproduce them quite accurately. As for the dog's coat, I shuddered at the thought of painting every hair, which the tutor said she would do! As I am very much a fan of impressionism, this is what I opted for, and rather suggested hair strokes by adding just a few here and there. After another hour or so, I knew I had stop before the whole thing looked overdone and ruined.
In conclusion, I'm fairly happy with the work in general - especially the eyes, though I think I went a little wild with the coat by flicking the small brush a bit too much in places. The coat in the photo being really rather smooth.
So that's it, lesson number one complete. If you leave a comment, please be honest and don't pull any punches, as I am quite hard to offend these days!
images: (above) - finished work. (below) after initial washes at art class. Images © Frank Bingley 2010.
