Tidbits

I didn’t want to make yesterday’s post too long, so I’ve decided to wrap up my week’s summary in a separate post.

What caught my eye?

Vienna is relatively clean. With all the smokers, however, there’s bound to be some unusual ashtrays.

Vienna’s Iceworld:

On Friday, I had to go to the main OeAD office to pick up my new apartment keys, and so I walked past City Hall and got to see Vienna’s Ice World. In addition to a couple of skating rinks, there were long snaking ice paths between them and very appealing food stalls. It was 3pm, and I hadn’t had lunch yet, so I had myself a Finnish specialty – fire roasted salmon on an organic baked potato and sauerkraut sauce. It was quite cold eating that standing outside, but fun too! I may return to skate one day- it’s 6 Euros entrance fee, plus 6 Euros skate rental. Lockers are 2 Euros, but I could skip that, making it an $18 Cdn outing.
It did look fun and it’s been a few years since I’ve been in Ottawa when the Rideau canal was open – the world’s longest outdoor skating rink.

At School:

Poetic Landscape

This week we worked on the concepts for several paintings. One I haven’t talked about before is our “Poetic Landscape”. Timea and Benedetto will be coaching us on very specific elements – drapery, transparent figures, and landcapes. If you’ve followed the link to Benedetto Fellin‘s artwork in previous posts, you’ll see he specializes in all three within each composition. Our first task was to find examples of these elements to collage together as our painting sketch – something I did in Photoshop. We’ll be doing the drapery from real set-ups in class, however. Although I’m really motivated to learn both drapery (for long flowing dresses) and transparent figures, I can’t say this project had me very excited when I first heard of it. I saw it more as a simple practice exercise. After putting these elements together, however, I’m really looking forward to it. I chose an image of a Buddha and a drapery set-up I found on the Internet and superimposed them on a photograph I took of Shag Rock in Fortune Bay, Newfoundland. Doesn’t it look like he’s rising from a lotus? Love it – and reconnects me to the very spiritual nature of the Rock – the island of Newfoundland. We’ll be doing this in oils over an acrylic ground.

Fantastic Creature:

Do you remember that I showed this pony painting by Bob Coonts in my Inspirations post? It’s similar in style to a phoenix that my friend Lori Reddy and I did together (I painted the background and she brought it to life, leaving me breathless! I later used a similar technique for “Jubilation”.

by Bob Coonts

by Dominque Hurley

phoenix by Lori Reddy and Dominique Hurley

Well, that’s the style I’ve decided to use for my Fantastic Creature project, but stepping it up a notch. On Thursday, I spent most of the day designing the owl, learning new ways of approaching such tasks thanks to Timea’s coaching. I also added another layer of colour and more white details on the canvas. Fun! I’m also including early process photos taken by Laurence & Florence as I just got these.

Sacred Codes

On Thursday, Laurence gave a great 2-hour presentation on the Hindu Worldview, looking at the different eras and sacred texts to answer these 3 questions: “Whence Come We?” “Who Are We?”, and “Where are We Going”?. I certainly learned a lot thanks to his wealth of knowledge and personal experiences.

Still in Progress:

On Friday, I spent most of the day working on my self-portrait – you can hardly tell the changes unless you know what to look for, but trust me, I’ve done quite a few more hours of work on this since you last saw it. Oils in the Mischtechnik take time… Laurence spent quite a bit coaching me on how to apply shadows on the female figure. Very helpful.