Winter Wonderland and Earthquake

We thought that winter was over, it had been a while since we had snow. I must say that driving into town has been a breeze this winter, dry asphalt and grey skies, perfect driving conditions. However, this past week it all changed, not only did we get lots of snow we also experienced and earthquake!


Yes, last night on February 27th after 9pm this powerful rumble seemed to englobe our house, both my husband and I jumped up and ran to the windows wandering what was happening, it almost seemed like a space ship was landing on our roof top. Than we thought it was an airplane that was flying very low. I first thought of an earthquake, but my only reference was from 30 years ago in Vancouver and everything in the house was shaking, litterally, this time it was eery more like a vibration, a very loud vibration but nothing shook. We learned this morning that it had been an earthquake of 3.9 magnitude and the centre was 32km away. How odd, since a few days ago Chili got shaken pretty bad. And I thought we lived in a safe environment, I don't know if there is such a place anymore.


These past couple of years we've experienced some really powerful storms, trees were derooted, some lost their sims others just cracked. The weather has been all over the map, very difficult to predict. There used to be a time when we sort of knew what to expect, what kind of summer or winter it would be like, now days no one knows and picking vacation time hoping to get good weather is nearly impossible.

Glazing

I was away last week and so I missed the class and fell behind with my glazing. This way of painting is time consuming because you have to wait for it to dry before applying the different color glazes.This week I worked on the skin tone and the drapery, I soften the background a bit. Also, I emphasized the hair with a darker tone.

This is a totally new experience for me, it requires patience and planning. Since I usually favor abstract painting and because I usually work from impulse and feelings this control environment is difficult for me. I learn a lot but I also stress out about whether or not I will be able to bring this painting to an acceptable level.


We have to do two more paintings by using the glazing method one is a reproduction of an old master and the other one a personal composition for our next critic day on March 5th, I chose to do a segment of The Temptation of St-Antony by Grunewald, this should be interesting to do and very challenging, don't forget I said a segment. In this case it will be a portion of a segment, there are many details in the original, it was done in 1503, part of this painting is so different of what was made in that era. I am actually looking forward to start this project.

Oil Painting & Glazing part 2

For this class we had to fill in the shadow areas to finish the under painting.We did this with an olive green.

I adjusted the subject, lenghten her forhead and changed the shape of her head scarf and brought her shoulder down a bit while filing in the whites to give the illusion of depth, compare pictures first from my last post than with this one.

Next class we will continue with color glazing.