Lia P-W – The Basics

I grew up in Brooklyn where I attended the Waldorf School until I began LREI in ninth grade. Growing up in a school that was heavily oriented towards creativity afforded me the opportunities to paint with watercolors everyday. My parents encouraged me to use art as a way to process the world around me and would let me disappear off into my own world as I was drawing. I also was taught  to draw realistically through the technical and more classical school of art. The combination of the emphasis on the magical and emotional element of art paired with the discipline, the focus and hard work, left an imprint of respect for the formal and more technical aspect as well as the fun imaginative and expressive part. 

My father, Grandfather, Great -Grandfather, and Great-Great-Grandfather were all painters. I hope to continue the family tradition and spend my life also in the pursuit of the elusive goal of mastery of my craft.

 I participated a month long art intensive called Cow House Studios in Ireland where I was first exposed to drawing the figure from life.  I am attending RISD in the fall and I plan to pursue drawing and painting as my major. When I am not at school or making art I can be found wandering Prospect Park with my dog Roxy and listening to Elliot Smith.  

For my senior project I focused my attention on the areas of my craft that I have had the least experience with or the areas in which I am in need of the most improvement. My first challenge was to only draw and paint from life. I did this to practice trusting my eye and working with the challenges that drawing from life presents such as changing light, weather conditions, as well as working with the 3 dimensional form and translating that to a 2d form on the page. Next I turned my attention to the figure. In order to be able to draw the human anatomy I had to understand how the body is all connected and what the foundation is below the skin. I began by looking at the skeleton, for this I found great references in the old masters Anatomy book. Next I added muscle to the body, and finally I focused on drawing the nude form and zooming in on the eyes and ears, hips and shoulder blades. 

For my final segment I focused on oil painting. I began by learning the proper maintenance of the paint and brushes. Next I began mixing my own color wheels from variations of the primary colors and one pure primary color. So for example I might do a Cerulean Blue, Yellow Ocher and Burnt Sienna and then make colors from combining their offshoots together. My goal for this final segment of my project was to focus on the technical aspects that make oil painting different from acrylic as well as to understand more about color theory and how to mix my own pallets by understanding how colors are going to react when you mix them.

 I return to the basics of art to improve upon my technical abilities before going to art school. 

This project was not about doing the art that is the most fun or interesting or meaningful for me. It is about learning the rules so that I can break them and know I know I am breaking them. So much emphasis in art has become about its significance or message, but in order for the artist’s voice to have any gravity it must be grounded in the craft by practicing the foundational elements. In short, my intention was to force myself to do the art I did not want to do whether it was because it was hard or boring or I just didn’t feel like it. This project was an exercise in diving head first into the unpleasant for the sake of something greater.