Quick Study Homework Assignments

These are four of the six quick study homeworks I did for this weeks class. My instructor really liked the first one and so do I. I included some of the in progress photos for that one. I also did one of the same photo of my friend Linda. As you can see it is not as good as the one I did to give to her, but I also did it in less time. My instructor liked it though (as do I.)




Linda/Hotel in New York on New Year's Eve/Cops in either Italy or Spain

Plein Air Quick Studies in Marin

This is one of the quick studies I did when our class went to Marin for the day to paint. It was a beautiful day and a great place to paint. I would like to go back and paint there again sometime.

Gifts for Friends

So these are a couple of paintings that I did for my friends.

The first one is of my friend Linda in Coit Tower where we went a few weeks before she left town in March. I knew I wanted to give her a painting and I thought this pose was great. I have to say I really love the painting and will have a hard time parting with it :)


The other painting is of my friend Sarah. It is a painting of her dancing and flying through the air during one of her dance performances. I didn't take the picture though....I got it from her brother. I loved the picture because it is so blurry and obscure and I knew at some point I wanted to paint it. I decided to do two little paintings. I did one in reverse and then mounted them together. I like this because they made another graphic picture when together. I see eyes or someone's face when I look at them together. Like a picture in a picture. I decided to paint it and give it to her the other day after her first (AMAZING) dance performance in San Francisco.



Both of them said they loved them. I hope so cause I do.

Surrealism Class: Image on an Object

This is the result of a homework assignment where we were supposed to find an image and paint it on an object in order to make a statement. The object one chooses to paint on can add to the meaning of one's piece. So he wanted us to pic an object that would, once again, be juxtaposed to the image. Our intent and meaning should spark a conversation where the viewer could see both the positive and negative.

I chose to paint the Gerber baby on a TV. Any guesses as to why I did this.? I really enjoy looking at this piece. I think it is because it is so small and it was such a pain to do (painting on glass is no joke).....so I am proud of how it turned out.


My Intent:
I decided to juxtapose a picture of the Gerber baby on a television. I chose a television because I am addicted to TV. Up until a couple of months ago I had to watch it all the time and had to watch it when I ate and whenever I painted. I don't watch it as much anymore but that is only because it is more convenient for me to watch movies on my computer. I wanted to show how television can be and is both a negative and positive thing in our American society. I thought a good way to do this would be by painting the Gerber baby on the screen. This trademark is a universal symbol in America and around the world. It is a household name and picture even for people without children. Most of us were probably fed Gerber foods at some point the same way we might have been fed TV growing up. So the question is, "Is this a good thing or not?" I think TV is a positive thing to a certain point, but there is a fine line. [I have more thoughts and examples but no need to list them all...the above is pretty much the gist of it.]

Surrealism Juxtaposition Final: Cupcakes and Women

These are the final two paintings of my Juxtaposition assignment (don't have a final picture of cupcakes cause the finished version was swiped :( in my surrealism class.
We were supposed to paint two images that aren't our own and juxtapose them in order to make a specific statement that can be argued to be both positive and negative....no propaganda. He wants us to spark discussions with our work.

So what do you think? What am I trying to say by choosing these two images? What statement am I trying to make by the way I painted the images and how I painted them? What do you think my intent might be. You wouldn't need to get the exact meanings and reasons that I have but hopefully I did my job well enough so that you can be in the same ballpark.



I wanted to juxtapose beauty and women in our society and how beauty is sometimes seen as something that should be placed on a pedestal and as something that can be consumed and as something that everyone wants to be or to have. So I decided to do this with a painting of picture perfect cookie cutter cupcakes and a black and white painting of very beautiful women painted very flat. I think that this piece shows both the positive and negative of this concept.