After Thomas Eakins, Portrait of Clara J. Mather
It's definitely really important for an artist to work from life, as I have been for the most part throughout the course of this blog; it helps add realism and an in-depth understanding of what the world you are trying to represent actually looks like. But as I said before, it's also important to identify artists you like and try to emulate their style. I don't just love portraiture because I like looking at people; if that were the case I would be more interested in photography or photo-realistic painting (although even then, if my photography were going to be anything special, I'd need to learn to see like a photographer and not just like a person with a camera). What I love about portraiture is the way that a few well-placed brushstrokes, generally done in shapes and colors that do not "accurately" represent what the artist is seeing, bring to life an image that is more powerful and ethereal than the subject on its own. To be perfectly honest, there is something pretty lifeless about my digital portraits so far, and to a lesser extent even my oil portraits, because the practice that led up to them was lacking in an understanding of what style I was using and what it meant to see the world through the eyes of artists who have used that style in the past. I've been taking a stab in the dark, trying to nail down how to make a portrait look good or how to use color dynamically without referencing the images that made me fall in love with portraiture in the first place. For most of my life, I've learned to draw people by doing pencil copies of either 1.) photos of friends or celebrities I got off the internet, or 2.) diagrams from books with names like "How to Draw Realistic Faces in Six Easy Steps" or whatever. Neither of these types of sources are very grounded in the expressive or historical depth I would life to be able to work with. So after a few months of trying to figure out how to paint faces more or less by trial and error, I finally decided it was time to learn to paint like an actual painter.
After Edouard Manet, Berthe Morisot with a Bouquet of Violets
I had no idea that there were any violets in this painting until just now, when I looked up the name of the painting. Looking at the original I guess I can see how there are some violets in it, but it's a pretty weak-sauce bouquet. In mine it looks more like her shirt poking through her jacket. *shrug*
Like everyone else on the planet who even knows what "Impressionism" is, I really love Impressionism. Morisot is one of my favorite artists, but this is a painting of her, not by her. I felt like I was able to explore the color relationships in the face in a way similar to some of my own portraits but in a much more smooth, natural way. The light side of her face is pretty green, but it doesn't look unnatural like it did with some of my celebrity portraits. I also really like the transition from a fairly detailed face to blurred features in the clothing and background; it brings the focus to the face without looking disjointed. And most of all, it looks like a painting--not like a weird copy of a Hollywood-lit photograph.
From Leonardo da Vinci, detail of The Madonna on the Rocks
This one is... not as good, obviously. I went back a few centuries and I'm not sure if it's because Renaissance proportions are a little more idealized anyway or if it's just because I don't care as much about this style, but the face is just super wonky. I did some more interesting color exploration though.
Henry Ossawa Tanner, Portrait of the Artist's Wife
I knew who Henry Ossawa Tanner was, but I didn't realize how much I loved his work until I started looking up images for this project. He was a Black artist from the nineteenth century and the favorite student of Thomas Eakins (see the first image in this post, which is after a painting of his), a very famous Realist master. He was also the first African-American artist to gain international acclaim.
Tanner wasn't an Impressionist, but you can certainly see the Impressionist influence in his work, and especially in my version of his work. Really I just love a lot of work from the nineteenth century, particularly Post-Impressionism and Romanticism. For those of you to whom that means anything.
Anyway, by this point I could definitely see some patterns arising in my interpretations of these artworks: I really like incorporating greens into the skin color, because it seems unexpected and almost unnatural but actually really accurately evokes the look of real skin under the right lighting. You can also see how I'm learning in these images to use sharpness and contrast to draw the eye to certain areas of the painting--in this case, to the chin and jawline, which frame the eye socket and stand out in bold contrast to the soft lines and blurred color areas of the rest of the image.
After Rembrandt, Self-Portrait
I don't think any exhibition of portraits copied from the masters could be complete without a Rembrandt or two. For this one I actually ditched the chalk brush for a standard round brush and tried something new; I don't like it quite as much but for some reason I stuck with it for almost all of the rest of these. I guess maybe I just didn't want to be distracted by what my brush looked like.
This one shows a bit more of a classic orange/purple warm/cool contrast, with very little green. I'm really pleased with the likeness on this one, even if the pose isn't as dynamic as some of the other ones.
After Millet, Portrait of a Naval Officer
I used the round brush for this one as well, and I think I did a better job with it. I kept refining things down to the point where there weren't any big, awkward, obvious circles anywhere. I think I now remember that the reason I switched was because in the digital art books I was learning from at the time almost all the professional artists said they liked to just stick with the round brush except when they were looking for some specific effect. I can see how that makes sense; I like the randomness of my chalk brush, but I had more control over the image this way. Because of my real-life painting style, I think I still like what I get from the chalk brush more; I like a more random, prominent brushstroke. I want my paintings to look like paintings. I also like to see the texture of the canvas poke through to the surface, and to have it contrast with the texture of thick blotches of paint.
Anyway, I think that the colors in this painting aren't as attractive as in most of the others, but I like that they are so much more subtle and feel "realistic." I'm really pleased with my ability to differentiate the texture of the shiny metal ornaments with the dull fabric.
After Gericault, from the Portraits of the Insane series
I really like the series this painting comes from; in a time when people with mental illnesses were thrown on the streets or even locked up so that people could pay to view them like zoo animals, Gericault decided to make them the subjects of a series of paintings, humanizing them and legitimizing them in a way that had historically been reserved for royalty and other public figures.
I'm not as big on my actual version of this painting; it's obvious that it was done quickly though so it's pretty good for what it is. I also just realized that this was an experiment with the default chalk brush (not the fancy one I invented while working on my series of cherry trees and continued to use for most of my subsequent portraits, but the default one that comes with Photoshop), which several of the co-authors of my digital art books also said they liked. While I can see the appeal of the simple round brush, I found this chalk brush to be pretty frustrating. Maybe if I had a fancier tablet so that I could customize my strokes more.
After Gentileschi, detail from Self-Portrait as a Lute Player
This is the last one I completed. Artemisia Gentileschi is another of my favorite artists; she was an Italian Renaissance artist who did very well in a time where female artists were especially rare. She's kind of a controversial figure; she has received a lot of attention for the fact that she was raped in her teacher's studio and actually sued the rapist (she lost, unfortunately, because it was nearly impossible to convict someone of rape back then--oh wait, that hasn't changed much), then created some prominent paintings of things like women decapitating sleazy dudes or being stalked by creepy men and actually being visibly uncomfortable in a time when most depictions of rape (which is like half of Renaissance art) depicted handsome men capturing maidens who ultimately seem to be enjoying it. Lots of art historians nowadays try to explain that away by saying that "rape" didn't mean the same thing back then, but really that's just a bullshit excuse to still be able to enjoy their favorite artworks without feeling conflicted about them. Anyway, the controversy comes because Gentileschi has been hailed as a feminist icon because of all this, but some people think that she completely lost all feminist credibility by ultimately marrying her rapist. Considering how common it is for women to stay in abusive relationships even now, that seems awfully victim-blamey to me, and I think it's dismissive of all her other accomplishments. If you can laud the violent misogynist Picasso for being a genius and a champion of pacifism, you can give Gentileschi due credit for beating the odds in an oppressive culture and becoming more skilled, famous, and influential than so many of her male counterparts (including her own father, who was also a Renaissance artist).
Anyway... This time I experimented with one of the Photoshop brushes intended to look like an actual paintbrush; again, mixed results, it would be better with a nicer tablet, but it was better than the default chalk brush.
And finally, just to remind everyone that I actually kind of suck, here's the very first painting I completed in this series:
I think this is a Dionysus by Caravaggio, but I can't find the original... clearly it's actually Satan's baby. Now that you have something to have nightmares about, see you next time!