Introduction:

My artistic ability when it comes to drawing, or painting is terrible. Unless I trace over some sort of already completed drawing, I can pretty much draw only well made stick figures and put random colors on a canvas. So, going into the art lab run by the Staten Island Museum, I expected to not really get how the art was drawn and find myself being lost in the room full of art. However Griselda, the person running the oil painting lab there, took us through a beginner crash course of oil paintings and was an amazing teacher as most of us were painting for the first time ever. I would say my experience at the art lab went better than expected as I created my first oil painting and learned a lot about how artists compose them.

Lecture & Painting:

Griselda told us the most challenging aspect of art is shaping the 2D world of a canvas into a 3D one. The artist has the responsibility of creating perspective within the canvas; the background having a lighter color to emphasize its presence and the foreground not overpowering the overall positioning of the art. She gave us a lot of useful tips such as starting with the background to make painting the foreground a lot easier, and also outlining our painting before even beginning. After her lecture on oil paintings, she set up everything to allow us to create our own paintings and we were given objects that we could choose from. I chose the fennel as the object since it was the most interesting to me, and I thought it seemed easy to draw. Just bits of splatters of green for the leaves and branches, and white for the base; however, it was a lot harder than I initially anticipated.

The funnel was placed within the perspective of a window and that’s what I imagined my painting to be. I wanted to have the window be within the perspective of the funnel and then have the funnel be the foreground of my painting. However, doing this as a beginner, was not a great idea. I started with the background of the clear sky, and the trees in the background, but then when I started painting the funnel it just blended in with my painting of the trees. So, within my painting you can’t really tell the difference between the foreground and the background and it just lost all perspective, which didn’t really turn out to be how I envisioned.

 

Picture of Funnel Painting

Conclusion:

It was fun to do my first oil painting at the art lab and it was therapeutic almost as I felt so relaxed after I finished my painting for some reason. It was also interesting to see how others painted the objects they chose; Aleksey’s and Kryistan’s paintings, in particular, did a really nice job of putting everything into perspective and you can clearly tell the objects they were attempting to paint. Looking back, my painting could’ve been a lot better if I just focused on painting the desk and the funnel, but what I pictured was the funnel getting a shining perspective from the window and the sky with the background having trees within it. So, I attempted to do so and although it didn’t come out as I expected, I definitely want to start painting more or just drawing in general. I used to draw a lot but I stopped, I think just before COVID so I want to start getting back into it again. Overall, it was a great experience and I learned a lot from Griselda and everyone there about oil painting, and it was great to sort of see the process for drawing the art and getting hands on with it.