Moving Towards a Convincing Portfolio for Grad School, 9/7-9/8/2025
September 7th + 8th, 2025
I’ve been a bit torn every time I go into the studio these past few days because on one hand I can’t stop thinking about animation, and on the other hand I know I need to be practical/strategic and continue to work on paintings for the sake of upcoming MFA applications. I need 15-20 images for each of my applications. I want to have 3-5 pieces of animation in the portfolio and the rest should be large, accomplished paintings. I’m trying to balance both, but it’s frustrating how little time there seems to be in each day. And both animation and painting are incredibly time consuming! Yesterday I spent around 4 hours here working and today I’m at the tail end of roughly 3– here’s what I managed to accomplish:
First, I finished stretching and nearly finished priming all of the canvasses I’ve built recently. Now I have a nice variety of surfaces to work on and I won’t need to worry about building any new ones probably until the end of the year. I tried a new method of gesso application. Using a scraper, I applied about 4 very thin layers of Utrecht Studio Series acrylic gesso, sanding between each layer. Then I thinly applied a layer of Gamblin’s oil ground on top using a palette knife. I am hoping the acryclic gesso seals the canvas and the oil ground will provide a nice smooth, slippery surface to paint on. I’ve also heard taht the oil ground makes it easier to wipe back layers of paint, since it is not absorbent like the gesso is. I wonder how that will make toning the canvas. Maybe I could tone the oil ground before applying.
I did a little bit of writing for Frog Ephemera yesterday, but ended up skipping that today. I didn’t feel like spending studio time on writing since I’m going to be dogsitting later and I think it’ll be a good time to get some writing in. Today I finally picked up a paintbrush and moved towards finishing an unresolved painting that’s been sitting around for quite a while now. It’s a painting of myself on a stage, spotlighted, casting a huge dark shadow over Kermit, who stands disapprovingly behind. I really love the way the figure looks but I needed to cover up some old brushstrokes that looked out of place. I also brushed a cerulean glaze over the entire stage area, and added some darkened creases to the curtains. They look weightier than they did before. I also cleaned up the ropes tying the curtains back and the lip of the stage at the bottom of the canvas. I was going to put some decorative flourishes down there but I ended up covering the entire area with a mix of Cerulean, Prussian blue, and a little bit of ochre mixed with Cad red. It’s a nice, warm deep blue shade, and I don’t think I’ll mess with it any further. However, this painting still feels sort of unfinished to me. I’ll give it one more sitting and call it a day.
Lastly, I started trying to do a watercolor background for my continuing rotoscope animation experiment. So far it looks really bad. Watercolor is really difficult to control. That being said, I only put one layer of wash over the whole thing so far. So maybe, like oils, the more layers the better. We’ll see.
To recap:
Stretched one more canvas, nearly finished priming all four that I’ve recently built using a combination of gesso + oil ground.
Set up a watercolor background layout for my rotoscope experiment
Moved one painting further towards completion
My semester starts tomorrow, but I am only teaching one class in the evenings. I hope that I’ll be able to complete some paintings this month. On October 1st I have a portfolio review + campus tour with the head of the graduate art department at UMass Amherst. So… I will need my portfolio to be more or less up to snuff by then. It’s making me incredibly nervous but I am fairly confident that I’m in a good position to keep finishing paintings in the few weeks to come.
See you tomorrow, most likely for more anxious ramblings.
Finn
