Elizabeth’s Artwork

My Artist’s Statement

My name is Elizabeth Gnau. This is a collection of some of my artwork over the past three years. I like to paint and draw, but I’m not the best at it. You will also get to see my progress on my oil painting. My oil painting has probably been my favorite part of middle school art. I really enjoyed experimenting and playing around with different paint colors. To the right is my gif which was fun to make because I just got to play around with colors and patterns.

My Oil Painting Process:

The first thing I had to do was cut my wood. I had to use the saw to cut the wood to the size I wanted my painting.

Then I had to glue the wood. I used a clamp and wood glue to do this and I left it to dry overnight.

Once the wood was in the right shape, I had to stretch my canvas over the the wood. I staple the canvas to the wood using the staple gun. When the canvas was fully stapled I poured water onto the back of the canvas. Doing that tightened the canvas.

Then I had to start my imprimatura. Imprimatura is like a sketch or outline of the painting you can do before you begin using actual oil paint. To do that I used burnt siena paint and Artist’s Thinner. I think the imprimatura was probably one of my favorite parts of the whole process.

When my imprimatura was finished, I was able to begin painting. I mixed the oil paint with walnut oil to make it the paint thinner, and easier to paint with. For the background I decided to do an ombre of the main colors of the painting. I really liked the gold in my painting, that I used for the background of the dream catcher and the feathers.

These are some of my sketches and drawings from over my middle school years.

This is a drawing of a hibiscus flower. I thought it was pretty and I really enjoy drawing flowers.

This is a drawing of a lily pad. Again I like drawing flowers. This drawing was really simple, but I think it turned out pretty.

This is my sketch that inspired my final painting. I think my painting turned out pretty similar to the original plan.

This is a sketch of a butterfly. I did it from a side view. The thing on the bottom is a flower.

This is a sketch of a rose. It is pretty simple, but I think it turned out pretty.