Art 105 - Collage Assignment Finished

As I talked about in my last post, for my painting class we had to complete a collage and then paint it. We were required to make a grid on the collage (1 inch squares on a 9 x 12 collage) and then transfer the drawing to a canvas (2 inch squares on an 18 x 24 canvas). I've not used this grid method before. Pretty easy to get a good result. In essence you stop looking at the entire piece, which can often be quite intimidating, and put it under a microscope (not literally). You draw each square as you see it. In the end you have a drawing that is darn close to the original.

We spent one entire class just mixing the colors trying to get close to the colors in the collage. This assignment was really all about mixing the colors rather than painting a cool painting. This color mixing thing is so much more challenging than I ever expected and certainly goes way beyond yellow + blue = green. Many of us were wasting lots of paint just trying to get close to the colors we needed. As a rookie, I found it helpful to use a chart that gave an idea of what colors to use to get to the desired result. If I continue with painting I will probably purchase this type of thing. It's not a color wheel, but a matrix of colors. There are books out there for this purpose too.

So here's the original collage again:



And here's my painting:

Using the two positive/two negative critique process, I think that the collage is copied really well with regard to positioning. I was very nervous about successfully painting the sofa and it turns out that I like that a lot. Most of the colors are pretty accurate. In the picture the smiling orange is quite yellow. The real thing is closer in color to the original.

On the negative side, the lavender is too dark, which is unfortunate because the phone is pretty interesting but you can't really see it because the area behind it is too dark. The teeth make the painting fun but the angle on them isn't steep enough as compared to the collage.

One interesting tidbit, after viewing the work in the class critique, it became apparent that an interesting collage doesn't necessarily make an interesting painting (and vise versa). It didn't seem to be a matter of painting talent. Curious.

Lorrie