Hello Everyone,
What a crazy couple of weeks. I hope that you have found some sort of stability and that things have settled down in your lives a bit. So, lets get back into painting! We were just about to begin our final project. This is the final assignment of the semester.
In this project you will be looking at the work of established artists (past or present), dissect the materials and techniques that they employ in the creation of their paintings, and emulate these techniques in the creation of your own work. Previously, when you were working on the forgery project you did the same thing with one artist, now you’re going to do it with more than one.
I want you to look at 3 key components. (Answer these questions)
How are the marks made?
What’s happening with the color?
How’s the composition constructed?
For example. Lets say the two artists you choose are Basquiat and Carvaggio.
Basquiat makes his marks quickly and sporadically. The colors are bold and bright, and there are multiple figures and objects dispersed throughout the composition. The portrait is cropped harshly out of the picture, and the general feeling conveyed by the painting is one of uneasiness.
Now let’s look at how Carvaggio paints.
First thing, this is a really large image so fee free to zoom in to get a better look. Here' the marks are made very deliberately with soft brushes. Glazing is employed which allows for subtle color changes. The colors are both very very bright, as if illuminated by something, and the backgrounds are very dark, almost like it’s a theater set. The figures are perfectly set within the composition. The width of the painting is in alignment with the length of Paul at the bottom.
So, now you’ve analyzed two different paintings, you’re going to be mixing up these two different techniques into the creation of a new work. So, for instance you could take the glazing and the dark background of Carvaggio, and then contrast this with Basquiat’s heavy handed marks.
Now, let’s say that you are really set on exploring a specific style, and you’re not interested in mashing up two very disparate styles. That’s no problem. For instance, if you’re interested in Germany Romantic Landscape Paintng you could look at two similar painters such as Caspar David Friedrich and Carl Rottmann. Both of these painters lived during the same time, did landscape painting, and were trained similarly in a very traditional academic style.
Carl Rottmann
Caspar David Friedrich
While answering the same three questions you’ll get similar results when comparing these two painters. The paint is applied in a similar manner, and the color schemes are very close, and even the way the composition is constructed is the same.
Now your job is to make a painting mixing up these two artists and create your own work. I’m very open to your interpretation of this, but I’d suggest using similar subjects. For instance, if the artist and painting you’re look at is figurative, then make a figurative work. If they’re a landscape, then make a landscape. There are some exceptions of course, for instance, you could make a painting of a teddy bear that looks like a Carvaggio painting, or you could paint a urban landscape like a German Romantic Painter. The subject matter in your paintings is up to you, but pay attention how your artists placed forms into the composition and the colors that they used.
So, you may be thinking that you don’t know where to start. Or where to find a bunch of different artists. Just head over to the instagram account for this course and look through the stories there. I’ve tried to compile a lot of different styles and techniques there. You should be able to find something that catches your eye. You can also look at this List of Art Movements wikipedia page and poke around there.
I want you to email me your project proposals. They should contain the following.
2 images of 2 different artist’s paintings.
Answer the 3 questions. Mark making, Color, Composition
Propose your project. “I want to make a landscape painting like Friedrich and Rottman of rural Idaho”
Moving forward you will have multiple options for keeping in contact with me. You can correspond with me via email, or you can meet with me on Zoom. If you wish to meet on Zoom just let me know in the email you send me and we can arrange a time. I just feel that if we have everyone from the class in a Zoom meeting about painting then it will be difficult to keep everyone’s interests for the full class. I think in this respect one on one meetings would be more beneficial.
You have the remainder of the semester to finish this project. However the rules on documentation remain. I want to see some steady progress, and not just the finished project! So take a photo every week of how things are going, and keep me up to date on your progress.
The final submission for this course will be a PDF of all the paintings you’ve made from the semester, and the final project. The more documentation you have the better!
I look forward to seeing your progress. Wish we were all still in class, but we’ve got to deal with what we have!