Photorealism is what first drew me to painting. In photo realism, the artist studies a photograph, and attempts to make the artwork as identical or realistic as possible. The earliest piece I remember painting was a Madonna and Child painting (unsure of which artist it was). Our social studies teacher had large rectangular ceiling tiles, and students could request a tile to paint and replace any of hers. I found the picture/painting on one of our trips to the school library, where we got to use the Internet during class. OOooooooohhhhh!! This was spring 2002, long before we had the internet in our hands all day long, so it was a fun day. I found the painting of Madonna and Child and said, “I think I’ll paint this for my ceiling tile.” A friend of mine, Graham, overheard me and told me there was no way I could paint something like that. But, I really thought I could. And so I did. We must have had some craft paints and brushes laying around the house. I remember that’s what I used. I remember them not being that great of quality. But the piece I produced was strikingly similar to the original, much to the surprise of my parents, myself, and, let’s pretend Graham, who probably saw it and never admitted how awesome I was.
To my knowledge no photo of my finished tile exists. I regret to this day that I do not know what happened to this early painting.
But, shortly after I painted a wave on a brick, which now lives on the bookshelf in my living room. I’m sure I used the same low-grade paint supplies for it.
Later in high school, I took IB Art. I LOVED this class. First of all, it was an all girls class (coincidentally). Second, for 90 minutes a day I got to do everything painting. I made a lot of great friendships in this class. Most of us took AP Art the next year. In these classes we had to pick focuses for our portfolios. In my parents house there are a lot of Jim Booth paintings. So he was one of the first artists (besides the one you learn about in Art History classes) that I was exposed to. Hop over here to see Jim Booth’s work if you are unaware of him. Booth’s paintings are REALISTIC. There is so much detail, even the trees in the very background have detail. I was/still am so impressed with this talent. One thing you will see often in a Jim Booth painting is palmetto trees. So for one of my focuses I picked palmetto trees.
There were other things I did during those classes too. Another favorite of mine was using India Ink (like watercolor) and adding detail to it once it dried with Prisma Colors. I used this technique in one of the first painting classes I took in college.
I went to the College of Charleston for biology, but I still took art classes while there. Drawing I was a requirement for any painting class. My favorite thing we did in that class was cover an entire paper with black charcoal and then use and eraser to make the drawing. I loved this so much because if you messed up, you could just make it black again, and you can always make something black. It is much harder to make paper pure white again when sketching with pencils/charcoal.
By the end of my final painting class in college, my main focus was flowers.
I found my old high school and college portfolios, perhaps in another blog post I can display my early years…