To increase my skills in painting decided to do a Statement in Painting Skills and Techniques at TAFE. This is program that goes for three hours a week and eight weeks, where you learn the basics of painting. In the class you do three or four paintings to practice your skills, with the first one being quite guided and the latter ones the teacher gives tips on how to improve the piece.

First Painting

The first piece I did was a still life with only black, white and yellow ochre acrylic paints. Overall I enjoyed this piece, I like the highlights and the balance between the colourful background and grey objects. I was vexed by the paint constantly drying on my palette, for miniatures I use a wet palette but that is too small for something this large. I’m quite happy with the result for my first painting.

Second Painting

The second piece I did was also a still life in acrylic, but this time I use an array of pigments. For this one I enjoy the mix of the three colours and how the white cups draw your eye. I find that getting the shapes correct to be quite hard, I much prefer to do the shading. I also liked using single pigment paint and mixing them together to get the colour I wanted, since miniature paint comes already mixed you miss out on this fun.

Third Painting

The third and final piece I did was a landscape in oil paint. Oil paints behave quite differently to acrylic paint, for one they remain workable for a longer period of time allowing for blending and mixing on the canvas. This provided to be both a boon and a bane, as when paint is on the canvas it effects anything else done on that spot until cured, meaning that mistakes cannot be fixed immediately. I want to try oil painting my miniatures as it allows you to do nice blending. I spent much longer on this painting than either of the first two, and I didn’t enjoy painting it as much and it is unfortunately not at a state where I’d call it finished. However I’ve run out of patience and it took a lot of willpower to not slam my head through the canvas. Landscape doesn’t have a lot of shading like still life, which I much prefer.

I feel that I’ve gained an appreciation to the time and effort it takes to create a painting. It was nice to also see the other students’ paintings and how they worked on them. Overall I think it was worthwhile to do the course, and I appreciate Tony for running it.