Painting 1

Noah Cummins “Large Sandwich”

12x12, Acrylic on canvas, 2021

Originally I wanted a simple landscape with unusual colors and a direct message. When I started painting it though, I realized that my original idea was stupid, so I should ruin my original idea. I got the idea from the surreal artists that we looked at in art history.

First I painted the green and red background and foreground and then painted the road. Then I painted the mushrooms and the signs next and after that I made my weird highway look more rough by scuffing the paint and adding gray to parts of the road. The calligraphy, black lightning, smiley face, and explosion in the back were all ideas I developed while I was painting.

When I decided I wanted to “graffiti” my painting my first idea was to make a personal message which is ultimately meaningless but it sounds grim and dramatic so I like it. The calligraphy in the letters turned out how I wanted them, they are blatant and professional looking, which I think, makes it sort of unnerving because those elements are so out of place. It’s an overbearing uniform thing inside of a painting that looks chaotic. But even the overbearing uniform part of my painting is covered by streaks of dark lighting, which reminds me of the end of everything, and the signs on the left are just another poor attempt at uniform in chaos and so it just becomes another layer. The explosion is my final nail in the coffin, it’s symbolic of an in-escapeable form of everything ending. This painting is basically what I think it will feel like seconds before you die.

It was challenging for me to stick to one idea, because I kept wanting new things. I think this because of how I overestimated my ability to paint a straight line, so it got progressively more unrealistic as I painted, but now I’m fine with it since I just vandalized my original idea.

I think this is a surreal painting, but I’m not sure you could pull a conscious part out of it since there aren't any humans in it. I just think it’s surreal because when I look at it, I’m perceiving a moment of consciousness.

Noah Cummins “Not Dead and Not for Sale”

12x12, Acrylic on canvas, 2021

This is a painting of the Stone Temple Pilots lead singer Scott Weiland. This is based on a photo of him from the early 90s. Stone Temple Pilots is my favorite band so I thought it would be cool to take a photo of him.

First I mixed a royal looking purple for the background but I only had enough mixed for the top half of the canvas, so then I sketched Weiland on the canvas on the bottom half and started painting him. Then I realized that was probably a bad Idea so I finished the background and then went back to painting Weiland and the microphone. I also used brushes to flick white paint on for stars.

I wanted to paint a picture of my favorite grudge icon. I tried to make the background look like space to symbolize vastness and creativity and I also put space in the reflection of his sunglasses. Since Weiland passed away, I put a ghostly looking purple silhouette around him.

The most difficult thing to do was the skin tones and the nose, but Mrs. Dunlavey showed me techniques on how to make it look less flat. Also the knuckles required a really steady hand to define but I’m proud of the final result. I’d probably change the amount of black outline I used on the shirt if I did it again, black is kind of a basic color but I didn’t really realize that until I finished. The beard also looks a little messy so I might clean that up.

I think this is a realistic painting but maybe the background is a little abstract. I’m proud of the end result, it turned out much better than I thought it would.