Cobalt Studios: Summer Scene Painting #10

Cobalt Studios

You want me to paint that on What?
This was the first project we painted completely on our own, without instructor demonstrations.  Each of us was assigned and image and a surface to paint it upon.  Each of the students was then assigned to a teacher as a design consultant.  Even though the teachers weren't demonstrating, they were guiding and directing us on the project.

When we were given our various assignments, and had been assigned to an instructor, we had about a half an hour to work on our image and determine a plan of attack on how we would approach it.  Then we had a meeting with our assigned instructor and gave our plan to them.  At that point they would kibbutz our plan and give suggestions on how to better approach it.

Then we took a small portion of our surface and attached it to a sample flat.  That was our proving ground to see if our plan would work.  I will not go into detail on my project on this blog post, but will go into greater detail in the next post, #11.

Here is the gallery of all the students' work for this assignment.

Friskits and stencils sprayed on polyester

Brush painted on rubber shelf liner.  Bet you didn't know it came in four foot wide sections

Lotus painted on scrim

Stencils on brushed denim

painted on chiffon

Cranes painted on polysilk

Mystery fabric from JoAnns

Stained glass window painted on a vinyl shower curtain

Stencils and sprays on a mystery fabric

Friskits and sprays on bogus paper

Tiger on velour.  This one was mine

I will write a complete blog post on the process for the tiger on velour.  That was my project on "You want me to paint that on What?"  At some point during the first week, I had mentioned to Kimb that I had never painted on velour, but had always wanted to attempt it and asked if they ever did projects on that.  Velour has been a scenic painters' surface for more than a hundred years and yet I'd never painted on it.  She said there might be a time when it would happen.  Little did I know...

Paint Olympics
At the end of the second week we had the Paint Olympics.  We had a few team events and a solo event.  Even at Cobalt, there was time for some fun and games.  We had a competition for snapping parallel lines.  The idea is for a team of two people to come as close to parallel by snapping first one line and then another, without using a tape measure or ruler or any other measuring device.

Another event was for teams of three to paint a continuous line the fastest down the length of the studio and turn the corner and make it back.  That was a wild one.

There was another event to see how far you could spatter paint.  I won that one.  I chose the springiest, sloppiest brush I could find and snapped it as tightly as I could.  I don't think second place was even close.

At the end of the Olympics, we received our "trophies".  I received a Pixar Cars coloring book, which I gave to my grandsons when I got home.  Here are some pics of the other prize winners.

The winners of the line snapping

I think we came in second in the line painting

I don't remember what they won for

For some reason, this seems to happen to me wherever I go

My time at Cobalt was fantastic.  It was something I had wanted to do for many years and finally I was able to do so.  I am thankful for the administration at BYU-Idaho and the College of Visual and Performing Arts who made it possible and provided resources for me to attend.  I had two goals for my time at Cobalt.  First I wanted to become a better painter and second I wanted to become a better teacher of scene painting.  I feel I accomplished both goals.  I was able to teach scenic art in the first semester back from my sabbatical.  I used methods I had learned at Cobalt and felt that each of the students succeeded better than they may have had I taught it the way I had in the past.  This was truly time well spent.  I hope I have another opportunity to learn at this magical place from these excellent teachers.