Painting Class

As I am finally finishing up my elementary education degree I had enough room in this semester to try out a painting class. I had been wanting to get into painting and because GBC offered a painting class I signed up! I was really excited to try it out and I was not disappointed! That class was the first night class (7-10pm) I had that I loved going to! The class focused first on acrylic then we worked with watercolor. I wanted to post some of my work. To get us started the teacher mostly had us copying other artists' paintings like in this impressionist painting where we were copying Paul Gauguin's Tahitian Landscape:
Then she had us work with still life. She brought in some objects for us to paint. I chose 2 big seashells. After I painted the seashells I was trying to figure out what to put them on. So I painted in a beach. Because I painted the seashells when they were sitting on the table in front of me they look sort of odd like they are standing up after I painted in the sea and sky. After still life we worked on painting buildings for perspective. She told us to find a picture with a building in it. Kade suggested for me to find a cabin in the mountains. The best I could find was a picture of an old worn down house next to a mountain, so that's what I used. This is also in acrylic: Then we moved on to watercolor painting. Except we didn't actually use watercolor paints. Because the teacher only had a certain amount of money for the watercolor supplies she bought everyone watercolor crayons. They were harder to use but once everyone figured out the best way to use them it got better. My first painting with the watercolor crayons looks like a crayon drawing so I'm not putting it up. This was the first decent watercolor I did, it's two deer during a sunset: As part of the class we were supposed to research a famous painter, report on them to the class, then create a painting like theirs. I did Albert Bierdstadt because he had some beautiful western landscape paintings like in Yosemite. I did one of his paintings in watercolor, Light in the Forest, because it didn't look quite as detailed and difficult as his other paintings. For our final we were supposed to do one last painting and choose another painting we did to display at the college. I wanted to try one of Bierdstadt's Yosemite paintings but they are just insanely detailed so I found an easier one online at yosemiteart.com by Mark Gudmundsen called Half Dome and Two Bears. I chose this one and the Light in the Forest painting for the final. We matted and framed them then hung them at the college during finals week. Now I just have to brave through four months of student teaching starting January!