A Pelvic Bone or a Grotesque Face?

Although this acrylic painting on cardboard looks like some sort of grotesque face it is actually a painting of an animal's pelvic bone.

I did the painting in my Introduction  to Painting class. The warmer color is from the brown of the cardboard and I used black acrylic paint for the dark and white paint for the highlights.

My Instructor, Adam Grosowski, is an awesome painter and teacher and he is making us do a lot of value studies in graphite (slide sketches) and in acrylic paint. He says that most anything can be rendered in ones, fives, and tens on the value scale. One is black, five is gray, and 10 is white.

The two paintings on the right are an interesting comparison. The one on the left I did in 45 minutes and it is on the brown side of the cardboard. After I finished, Adam said that I needed to take a detail of  the painting and blow it up and do another painting-- only this time I needed to do it in a 15 minute time frame. (I did it on the white side of another piece of cardboard.)

The interesting part, to me, is that one painting took 45 minutes and one took 15 minutes and yet they are comparable and the 15 minute painting doesn't at all look crappy even though I was racing the clock.

This also was the experience of the rest of the class.

 

I am learning a lot and after every class I feel as though I am walking out a better artist. Next term I have Adam Grosowsky as my Instructor in Intermediate Drawing and I can't wait!