Experiment: Oil Painting (Part IV)

The progression of a painting. I am not pleased with this one yet. It is roughly based on this image:

Experiment: Oil Painting (Part III)

The progress of a painting roughly based off of these photos:

Experiment: Oil Painting (Part II)

The progression of a painting, roughly based off of this image from my daily sky images:

 

 

Experiment: Oil Painting

I haven't posted a lot of my actual thesis work. That's because I've been mostly focusing on oil painting, and since I've technically only taken one class on the subject, much of what I've done this year I'm calling "learning experiences". I would rather not show these learning experiences to the public. For example, last quarter, I made a painting that was 4ft x 1.5ft. I decided to try my hand at stretching my own canvas. So I looked up instructions online (you can really find just about everything online!), bought a roll of unprimed canvas, gesso, and some pre-made wooden stretchers (the bars that make up the "frame" of the canvas).

4ft was about the tallest stretchers the store sold, and they only had two, so I had to buy both of  them. One of them was severely warped. But I made do; I tried to unwarp it with wet paper towels and heavy books. This seemed to be working, but it drifted back into place after I had assembled the canvas and had begun painting. So I was stuck with a warped painting that simply would not lat flat on the wall. I had to hang it in a thesis gallery show, and it was embarrassing. I did not take any photos of it.

Fortunately, I got instructions on how to build my canvases completely from scratch, stretchers and all. This quarter, I decided to go for broke and make four all at once.

The stretchers, made from 1x3s and quarter-round molding:

 Triangle corner pieces:

Here's where those triangles go:

Ready to nail together:

 The final product:
 

Only three of the four frames ended up useable; one of my long stretches ended up at least half an inch too short somehow, and though I tried to wrangle things into place, it was just a sad mess. I will get more supplies and make a new fourth frame sometime soon.

Thesis

I am in my final year at school, and because of that, I am working on a thesis. (Thesis: it's a big deal.) I'm not ready to share the specifics of it yet, but the short of it is, my thesis is about the celebration of nature. Nature has always been a common subject in my work, and now I am exploring the theme behind it. I decided to stick with a single specific subject for the thesis, the sky

I have taken many photographs of the sky in the last couple years. Here are a few I've taken specifically for use in my thesis.

 

The Opening Theory

Hi, I'm Kimberly L Carey! You may remember me from such films as the University of Cincinnati and Facebook. But really, I do go to UC. I'm in the Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) program, specifically Fine Arts, and I'm a 2D concentration. I do pen and ink comics, printmaking, some photography, and some digital work. I'm 21 years old and I'm a fourth-year student with one more to go. It'll be here before I know it! Scary!

This blog is called "An Experiment" because that's how I've been approaching new things, as experiments. If I get confused or frustrated, I just insist, "No no, don't worry. Treat this as an experiment. It's just an experiment." That usually helps. Also, I just mistyped "experiment" five times just now, including that last one.

Here's what I've been up to recently. Click them to see them full-sized.

Oil painting of an evening sunset
2010

Relief print
2010

A self-criticism, pen and ink comic
2010

Digital photography
2008

Pen and ink self-portrait and biography
2009

Next two:
Illustrations from a story, colored in Photoshop
2009

 2010