Cezanne
Cezanne's Riverbanks
In the process of this project I gained new knowledge about the act of painting. For example, I have used a miniscule amount of paint in my previous art experience (Survey of Visual Arts) and I never learned how to use the medium efficiently and to my liking. I tested the use of many different techniques of painting (spreading using a wood block, using dried paint chunks, and splattering) along with the traditional brushing technique to create an overall texture that I feel is intriguing and makes the viewer want to feel the painting. A difficulty that I encountered in terms of color making was that I could not recreate my colors after they had dried because we had run out of one of the major brown colors I was using to mix. Despite that I was forced to improvise with other colors, I created a brown that was almost the same, but was a slightly different color. One other lesson that I learned the hard way with color mixing is to add the darker mixing color to the lighter mixing color. I feel that my final canvas is somewhat unified, but that there is more uniformity in the different layers. For example, the sky has much less texture that the middle and foregrounds. I think that this layering of texture is appealing because it end up much more realistic (or I hoped it would). I feel comfortable with using acrylic paints as a medium, but I prefer other mediums to work with. I feel that with paint I am inclined to be more abstract, and to work more with the texture that making an object or a landscape look real. Because of this inclination, I have some trouble controlling the medium so that it clearly depicts the landscape.
