Olivia Lei

It’s time…it’s the end of an era. This series of blog posts about my new artistic endeavors is wrapping up, and it’s time to scrutinize the artist’s arc that has taken place over this last semester.  Firstly, one unexpected benefit is that it feels overall easier to write. These blog posts started out feeling…

This will be my last post on my plein air journey and my second to last post for the season. Over the course of this learning process, I have learned a number of things. 1. Linseed oil is essential. 2. Setting up and taking down a French easel is like wrestling an ungainly deer…

This week my plein air endeavors took me to a bit of an unusual place: a local cemetery. The location boasted some great examples of atmospheric color shifts, with rolling blue hills visible in the background, as well as an opportunity to practice some one-point perspective, where the paths and headstones disappeared into the…

The formidable Ghost of Paintings Yet To Come knocked on my door and I, like some reincarnation of Scrooge, answered with both trepidation and a decidedly cranky attitude. I knew my week would be incredibly busy, yes I would have to carve out time to paint and hopefully improve upon last week’s experience. Even…

Allow me to tell you a tale of woe. It begins with me dropping a French easel on my foot, and ends with me wasting, likely, ten dollars worth of paint, but having some sense of triumph in spite of it all. I would like to preface this story by saying that it was…

Last week’s urban sketching was a whimsical experience, but when you add sketching passersby into the already unpredictable concoction that is live art, we end up with a very different result. I will be the first to admit this week challenged me, and took far longer than I expected, partially due to feeling a…

Do places have a kind of soul? A personality? Some mysterious combination of details that brings them to life, like a book character or a portrait? I have always argued in favor of yes, and this new endeavor of urban sketching will hopefully provide a hill of evidence tall enough to die on. Concept…

Ever since I was around thirteen years old, I wanted to dedicate my time to improving my art and storytelling abilities. These first few years of my journey were filled with headlong leaps of faith into the unknown, drawing whatever interested me and learning from books at the library. It was the usual middle…

The time of quick 2-5 minute gesture sketches is over. This week I embarked on a journey to capture the personality of two of my favorite animals: my small dachshund mix of many years who has provided me endless joy and love, and the local goose who has been plotting my demise for almost…

A new era begins: Now my goal for this semester is to experiment with gesture sketches, focusing on animals. Many of my classmates and I tend to not draw animals very often, and this is an excellent way to practice form, proportion, and movement in a low-pressure environment. These gesture sketches in particular took…