Oil Stick Study

the idea behind these pieces was mostly to use a new material and to explore the properties that it provided. I had never used oil sticks before and so the process and the way that they blended and just worked in general was reall new to me. The first drawing was one that was done outside and of real life. I sat outside at school and looked at this little grouping of trees that was in the middle of the parking lot and tried as best I could to copy the shapes and colors and not so much the realism and details of the scene. With the second one I was working off of a photograph and so I found it easier just because I could draw something from a 2D Surface onto a 2D surface. I also was more familiar with how oily the paint sticks were, and how good it looked when you really applied it super thick then played with the textures.

The material was paint sticks. They are sticks of the same material as oil paint, but with something in them to make them a little harder so that one can hold and draw with them. I have never used them before so this was a really interesting experience. I noticed after seeing other peoples pieces after doing the first one how important it is to layer on the colors really think so that you can then play with texture. You can see between the two I did get better at that in the second one. I also was not expecting the sticks to be quite as messy and just smudgey as they were, I thought they were going to act really similarly to oil pastel, but they are a lot looser than that so you can't go in and get details, the medium really made me focus on shapes and colors.

I started with the one of the trees Forest Island, and I began by just lightly sketching out the shapes of the trees. I looked at the undertones of the trees and the fall colors that were mixed lightly into the greens of the softwoods. I started with the leaf and needle colors and then went in with brown to show the trunks. For the second one, I did what I was supposed to and did the background first so that it was much more vibrant and full. Then I added on layers from there.