Listening to Sarah Emerson

Professor Emerson came into methods to share a bit with us about painting. While playing with paint and passing around color books, she explained some of her painting preferences and tips.

Here are some pieces of advice that I will most likely follow:

• She suggested buying slow dry to make acrylic paints dry less quickly which I think is a really good idea.
• She said that adding medium is like adding water but better for holding the paint to the canvas, so I think I should invest because I like my paint to be really watery but it sometimes can mess with the paint already on the canvas.
• She mentioned that one can paint the canvas one base color that is common in the entire image before actually starting painting. I really wish I had done this for the Maya Nude, it would have been so easy to paint the whole thing pink to start off with!
• She also told us how she interned for free with an artist and how that experience was very influential for her. This is something I will definitely look into.

After giving the talk to our class she joined me in my workspace to look at the Maya nude and critique my progress. She said that I should fill up the huge white space that I had thus far neglected, and we agreed it was bad to leave so much white space on the canvas. I immediately colored in the space and I think psychologically it does make a difference that it isn’t just blank anymore.

I appreciated these nuggets of wisdom and will hopefully be able to explore them more in depth soon.