First Experience in Graduate School...

            Being accepted to graduate school is one of the most exciting moments one can experience. After a very long wait and 4 letters later, the fourth being the letter of acceptance, a huge wait had been lifted off my shoulders. The real world can wait 3 more years...

           My first semester had many failed, good, great, and meh ideas for paintings. I realize that this is grad school and it is time for a change in style, in concepts and a new level of thinking. No more Carravaggio, no more strong lighting, no more one figure compositions. It is time for the extreme, environments.

       I was asked at the beginning of the semester what the figure meant to me. Why was it so important? How can it be used differently within my compositions? So I did the extreme, I started my rendering interiors.
Such a difficult thing to do! The lighting is reflected from everywhere, the color is different from every surface!! AHH! the easiest part was the line drawing! Alright, alright it wasn't too bad but it was a great   new route to explore.

I figure that the best place to start would be my kitchen. Initially I wanted to talk about different roles that are played within a small environment. I wanted to use the viewer as my figure and the environment as the figure. 
 This painting is not a finished one. I took the opportunity to experiment with different techniques and brush strokes and basically just see what happens..

Since I work at a bakery, it would be more interesting to use different stations and figure out the identity of the person according to the the place that they work in and what that meant.

 Adding a pastry was certainly a big question.  Desserts are normally linked to sexuality and that was not the intended route to take. In order to avoid that, representing the process of making it would take that notion away. In this case, the dessert represented the status and level of education that was acquired.

   Finally, after exploring different ways of how to represent the idea of what the figure is and how it can be represented, I decided to take a little break and just make a painting with a figure for fun.

This semester has been a true eye opener. It was a great start to a knew adventure! One successful painting is certainly a sign that it'll only get better from here...

Happy New Year everyone!!!