Jesus and Mariah Carey Studies

These are a couple of small scale 8"x10" studies for larger pieces I'll be working up. I enjoy looking at the values, colors and placement with regards to text early on. I also love the fresh emotive quality of this small scale. Enjoy!

Monday Study

Sometimes the twenty minute study turns out much better than the painting that took hours and hours. This is a 6"x6" study using acrylic on hardboard and experimenting with garnet gel as a medium.

Arise (Study)

Here is a study for a large still life I'm working on... I'm loving the textural ground and lots of Burnt Umber. I like the idea of figuring out what you see on the edge of consciousness. What is clear and what is not? Maybe you see something you wouldn't normally see when fully awake. That's something I'll be exploring more in the large piece.

Boudoir (Study)

This is a small study for the larger painting I'll be completing in class this week. I've been working more and more on expressing mood and emotion in my paintings and this is increasingly irrespective of detail and perspective. I'm finding classical techniques are often unreliable in conveying what I want to say.

My teacher, Baoping Chen, spoke to me last week about the process of painting first what you see, then what you know, and finally, what you feel. Personally I believe there is one more step: painting what you sense spiritually. I think this is a separate process that involves perception apart from the five senses. This is something I continually grapple with in my art.

Figure with Texture

This was a small exploration I did in class this week. All I want to do is add detail! But I restrained. You can fill in the blanks.

The Illustration Friday quote especially suits me this week: "The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play." - Arnold J. Toynbee

Self Portrait at 30 (process)

I'm close to the completion of my MFA in just a few weeks but have found that it's been good to keep my hands busy with side paintings. Watch this journal as I will reveal my thesis paintings here soon (and perhaps some of my process too)!

Below are a couple shots of a 'side painting': my self-portrait in progress. The first is my initial lay-in of colors and some structure. The second I worked more on the face and values. Next I'll solidify what I'm doing with the background before I go back into the face some more. Portraits are always difficult but a self-portrait especially so as I've found I don't keep as still as I like! This makes it hard to capture the bone structure.



Something I've been exploring more lately is working with desaturated colors and limiting saturation to the focal point. This is difficult with acrylics but also because I love color and now feel like I'm painting with 'mud' everywhere. I hope this will end up making my paintings more sophisticated.

Oh look! Here are my brushes. I can never get them quite as clean as new.

Self-Portrait at 30 (Underdrawing)

This is the underdrawing for a self-portrait I'm working on... a celebration of my 30th and the impending end of my MFA.

Painting Jann Arden

So this is another painting I'm working on. The subject matter is Jann Arden in concert (one I attended in 2007 in Calgary) with her guitarists Russell Broom and Graham Powell. An amazing concert I hope to catch the spirit of in this painting!

The first image is the drawing and composing the layout of the canvas. Then the next is laying in the value pattern and color choices. The original canvas is 22"x28" horizontal. Something I've noticed as I've been painting is that I need cooler reds and purples in order to get the right light on the stage and where it's reflecting on Jann's back. I'm enjoying trying to capture each person's attitude in their gesture and proportion, as well as color.



Original available for purchase.

Thesis Development

This is a page straight out of my directed study journal where I'm annotating the development of my thesis. This is some sketching for an illustration of Sarah from Hebrews 11:11

In Progress 2

Here he is again! This time I've blocked in some color and refined the values some more. I think the reflected light is going to be fun in this piece as it bounces back and forth between the boards and the figure. Hope you're enjoying watching my process.

Until next time, peace.

In Progress

An oil painting in progress for my Situation and Environment class with Zhaoming Wu. This is the first stage. The line drawing is done with a small flat brush and then I blocked in the major values with a large flat brush. The paint I used is a mixture of ultramarine blue and van dyke brown. I 'watered down' the paint with Gamsol to cover large areas thinly.

I've started using Gamsol as a medium instead of Turpentine or Turpenoid because it has almost no smell compared to others and is much easier on the environment. In addition it much less flammable. So far I'm liking it as it feels thinner and more like painting with water than a medium.

Boots

So, I'm back at school for Spring 2009... and this is my first painting. It's 16"x20" oil on canvas limited to a monochromatic color palette with titanium white for the lights and ultramarine blue / raw sienna mixed for the darks:



Also, I'm endeavoring to get my website back up and revamped before my thesis begins stealing my time away. Almost there... keep watching! www.bethanyillustrates.com

Sold.

The Secret Garden

This is a sketch I'm working on painting digitally right now... for the book "The Secret Garden" in my digital painting class. It was a favourite story of mine growing up, and I remember listening to a dramatized version on audio cassette.

Communication

©2002 Bethany Vanderputten
Medium: Acrylic + FW Ink on Gessoed Denim

I created this illustration for TEC Calgary in 2002 as part of a series of 10 banners which convey the topics of talks like "Who am I?", "Friendship", "Communication", etc. They were all sewn into banners with various colors of matting and these were hung on wooden dowling with a thick cord attached. (See example to the left). This banner was created for the talk entitled 'Communication'.

The following is an example of a preliminary sketch for this piece: