I've been in Carmarthen for a few weeks now and have settled in quite nicely. Myself, along with fellow international students, have traveled to a few unique destinations including Aberystwyth, Swansea, and the Gower and while doing so have seen everything from castles to boardwalks to massive bodies of water.
Besides all of the wonderful sites to see, the main focus remains furthering my skills as an artist and concentrating on academia. I was able to gather 99% of materials needed to begin a painting-the remaining 1% is a tube of cad. yellow that I forgot to pick up at the local art supply store. In edition to paint, a friend of mine and university-mate Meghan directed me to a cool warehouse full of random things in order to find a piece of glass such as one found in a frame. And the trip was indeed a success!
To make a palette from a piece of framed glass is quite easy: take out the glass, put a white paper backing and cardboard on one side, then finally tape everything down around the edges with a strong duct tape and you're set. In short, you want to use a glass palette for oil because it's easy to clean and makes mixing paint fairly simple.
But before I started painting on canvas, I chose to make an ink wash by dropping some India Ink in a bowl of water and doing 30 minute or less sketch-paintings. Sketch-paintings or pre-paintings are useful tools to figure out where you want your light source to be in your still life and they also help compose your painting so that you don't waste paint on the final product.
All in all I'm very pleased where this project is headed. I really enjoy the subject matter of glass and trying different techniques and color palettes to achieve my vision. There's a long road ahead but it's a much welcomed challenge.
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