Pre-College Experience | Upcoming Projects | 22x30 Watercolor | Mid-Summer Gallery

My last blog post was in May! I can’t believe how fast time flies. I ended the spring semester with good grades, I’ve made many paintings, and I’ve done so many new things. The biggest and most notable of my experiences since my last post was the summer program I attended.

Pre-College Experience

On July 12th, after days of excitement and nerves, I arrived in Beverly Massachusetts at Montserrat College of Art. I feel comfortable sharing this information because I live far enough away that it does not doxx me whatsoever. For the first time in my life I was able to surround myself entirely with art-making in a space dedicated exclusively for it. Knowing that back at home I would have my usual distractions, during the 21 days I spent at Montserrat, I painted from 9 AM to 8 PM. At first it was exhausting, but by the fourth day when I had become comfortable with the people around me, the studio became an amazingly productive space for me. I was also lucky to have a friend join me nearly every evening by the second week, and I count myself lucky for their company. At Montserrat College of Art’s Pre-College Program, each student takes a foundations class (Traditional, Digital, or Creative Writing), which they have every day, and two electives. The electives that I chose were Painting and Animation. Unfortunately, I have no way to share my animations in this post, because I forgot to send myself the files, and haven’t yet reached out for them. In Foundations Traditional, I had an amazing opportunity, which was to work in CHARCOAL. This was so exciting for me because I have not worked in charcoal, with the exception of a few charcoal doodles in my sketchbook. I picked up charcoal relatively quickly, and it is now a personal favorite medium to work in. During the first week someone made the offhand comment that working with charcoal is the closest drawing medium to painting, and it completely changed how I handled it, and definitely helped me loosen up. I’m very happy with my still-lives (see below images) and I feel semi-proficient with charcoal now. With the drawings I made in class and outside of class considered, my favorite drawing made was the final assignment: a master copy of our choice. I decided to draw Manet’s “The Railway”, and I feel very good about it. My first elective was Painting, and it was VERY hard for me at first because we worked in Oils. I learned a lot about oil painting, and I definitely improved a great deal while there. I spent a lot of time in the local library reading about Oil painting, and I also had an amazing time reading about artists who primarily work in oil paint. Below are two oil paintings I made, one being a self portrait and another being a train station landscape. My other Elective was Animation, and, though I was skeptical at first, was an amazing time. We worked digitally which definitely gave me whiplash, but slowly worked through it. The teacher was delightful, and he was passionately anti-Disney. I read the Walt Disney biography by Bob Thomas, and still didn’t feel educated enough to argue it. I was very sad to leave the program by the end, and it has made me seriously consider going to Art School for the first time. I still want to get to a point in my education where I can go wherever I please, but I will not cross out art school has a possibility. To mine and my families pleasure as well, I left with a $15,000 annual scholarship to the school if I choose to go there. I wholeheartedly recommend the program to any high-school Junior/Senior.

Upcoming Projects

I will keep this segment brief, but this year I have a few projects that I am working on. The first of these is a club! Yes, I am starting a club for local teenagers to paint plein air. As a homeschooler, it has been very difficult to meet people my age, and even harder to meet someone who likes to paint. Though I don’t know how much interest there will be for a club like this, but I will be starting it nonetheless. The next project I am working on is a painting that is at least 30x40. While in Beverly I got a sheet of 40x40” watercolor paper for $25. I am absolutely thrilled that this has happened, and instead of cutting it up, I have decided I am going to work on a gargantuan watercolor painting. I feel much better about this now that I’ve made painting on Imperial size (22x30”) paper. I still need get plywood that fits to this size, as well as plan for what I’ll even paint! There is another project that I want to work on, but because it requires me to be accepted into a program, I won’t share, just so I don’t let myself down.

22x30” Watercolor Painting

On the very last evening of the program I worked away from 8 AM to 8:30 PM (I’m lucky to not have gotten in trouble, studios close at 8:00 PM), I finally finished a great goal of mine. On that day, I started and finished a 22x30 watercolor painting, and I think it came out very well (see final image in gallery). While working on this, I tried something new and used a flat brush called a “stroke” brush. It was used on the choppy reflections in the water which were very hard to render. I didn’t have a hard time filling the paper, I didn’t feel very different from an 18x24. I can’t believe it wasn’t even a year ago that I thought 12x16 was too big! Below the image of it, I will link a Reddit post I made sharing the progress pictures.

Mid-Summer Gallery

See images below

ABOVE: This was the final project. I chose to draw Manet’s “The Railway”, which is one of my favorite paintings of all time. We worked on 22x30 paper which was new to me at the time.

My first 22x30 painting

https://www.reddit.com/u/PheeB_art/s/WLsv41LldM