Art Class! Day one.
Well, technically it's the day after my first painting class, but I only got home at around 9:00 and I am trying to get on a good sleep schedule. I knew that if I went on the computer then, I would be up all night.
The painting class is in Old Montreal, every Saturday. I live down in St. Lazare, which is a good hours drive from downtown, so I am currently staying at my Dad's place. I might do this every weekend, which is nice, cause I don't get to see him often.
So! First class. I was a little nervous, because while I've drawn practically my whole life, this was my first time painting. But it was fun! We did a charcoal drawing first, all a copy of the same picture, and mine came out awful and smudged and messy but I like it anyways. When I was doing the initial sketch, I went way overboard and did too much detail and confused myself. Ha! =)
Since the picture wasn't my own concept or anything, I'm going to have ask my teacher's permission before I post it. If he says yes, then you'll definitely see it here! I can't scan it, because I think if I did it would smudge beyond recognition, and anyways, my scanner sucks, I need a new one, but I can take a picture of it and post it.
There are seven people in my class, and of course I am the youngest of the lot, being 18. Everyone else was in their thirties or older. This was only the first class, so I forgot most everyone's names, except for the woman next to me named Gloria. She had no experience with anything artistic at all, so as the two newbies we bonded quickly.
My teacher's name is Scott Addis, and he's not actually and art teacher, but a professional artist. Here's the link to his site: http://www.galerieaddis.com/english.html
It was only his second time teaching a class, so he babbled a lot, but he was really funny and thankfully he was English. But since most of the student were francophone, and he had trouble with the language, there were times that he was focusing so much on getting his French right that he forgot to explain in English. So I had to really listen! I can be really shy, so sometimes I don't ask questions when I really should, but most of his 'French' was Franglais anyways, so I got by OK.
After we did the charcoal drawing, we did the same picture with oil paints, and once again me and Gloria were clearly the newbies in the class. Everyone else seemed to have much more experience with painting, so their art was so much better. A couple of them were really amazing. It's really interesting to see the differences in people's styles, and you can really see it when a group of people are all doing effectively the same painting. All the results were so different!
My painting was very blotchy, but better than my charcoal picture, though I think I overdid it a bit. I should have stopped sooner. Although apparently I paint like a guy. I'm not sure what Scott meant by that, as he didn't elaborate. the whole conversation pretty much went like this:
ME: *nervously* Um, is this all right?
SCOTT: ...Huh. You paint like a guy. Yeah s'good! *Leaves abruptly to check on the other students*
ME: ...What?
GLORIA: I think that he means that you're not timid with your brush strokes. You're like, *mimes "bold" brush stroke* bold, you know?
ME: ...
Gloria was VERY timid with her work, and I was only sightly less so than her, so I'm not sure if that was it. Personally, I think he meant blotchy and imprecise. Only in more artistic terms, as it didn't seem like a criticism.
The painting is still at the studio to dry, so I can't post that anytime soon. But hopefully I'll be able to in a couple of weeks
The class ended at around 5:00 pm, so afterward, I met up with my Dad and we went down to Chinatown for dinner. There's this buffet that I always go to and It's soooo gooood. So all in all it was a really good day.
Although I did get lost downtown for a short while. Have to work on that.
The painting class is in Old Montreal, every Saturday. I live down in St. Lazare, which is a good hours drive from downtown, so I am currently staying at my Dad's place. I might do this every weekend, which is nice, cause I don't get to see him often.
So! First class. I was a little nervous, because while I've drawn practically my whole life, this was my first time painting. But it was fun! We did a charcoal drawing first, all a copy of the same picture, and mine came out awful and smudged and messy but I like it anyways. When I was doing the initial sketch, I went way overboard and did too much detail and confused myself. Ha! =)
Since the picture wasn't my own concept or anything, I'm going to have ask my teacher's permission before I post it. If he says yes, then you'll definitely see it here! I can't scan it, because I think if I did it would smudge beyond recognition, and anyways, my scanner sucks, I need a new one, but I can take a picture of it and post it.
There are seven people in my class, and of course I am the youngest of the lot, being 18. Everyone else was in their thirties or older. This was only the first class, so I forgot most everyone's names, except for the woman next to me named Gloria. She had no experience with anything artistic at all, so as the two newbies we bonded quickly.
My teacher's name is Scott Addis, and he's not actually and art teacher, but a professional artist. Here's the link to his site: http://www.galerieaddis.com/english.html
It was only his second time teaching a class, so he babbled a lot, but he was really funny and thankfully he was English. But since most of the student were francophone, and he had trouble with the language, there were times that he was focusing so much on getting his French right that he forgot to explain in English. So I had to really listen! I can be really shy, so sometimes I don't ask questions when I really should, but most of his 'French' was Franglais anyways, so I got by OK.
After we did the charcoal drawing, we did the same picture with oil paints, and once again me and Gloria were clearly the newbies in the class. Everyone else seemed to have much more experience with painting, so their art was so much better. A couple of them were really amazing. It's really interesting to see the differences in people's styles, and you can really see it when a group of people are all doing effectively the same painting. All the results were so different!
My painting was very blotchy, but better than my charcoal picture, though I think I overdid it a bit. I should have stopped sooner. Although apparently I paint like a guy. I'm not sure what Scott meant by that, as he didn't elaborate. the whole conversation pretty much went like this:
ME: *nervously* Um, is this all right?
SCOTT: ...Huh. You paint like a guy. Yeah s'good! *Leaves abruptly to check on the other students*
ME: ...What?
GLORIA: I think that he means that you're not timid with your brush strokes. You're like, *mimes "bold" brush stroke* bold, you know?
ME: ...
Gloria was VERY timid with her work, and I was only sightly less so than her, so I'm not sure if that was it. Personally, I think he meant blotchy and imprecise. Only in more artistic terms, as it didn't seem like a criticism.
The painting is still at the studio to dry, so I can't post that anytime soon. But hopefully I'll be able to in a couple of weeks
The class ended at around 5:00 pm, so afterward, I met up with my Dad and we went down to Chinatown for dinner. There's this buffet that I always go to and It's soooo gooood. So all in all it was a really good day.
Although I did get lost downtown for a short while. Have to work on that.