Rembrandt

"Try to put well in practice what you already know; and in doing so you will in good time, discover  the hidden things which you now inquire about. Practice what you know, and it will help make clear what now you do not know." - Rembrandt.

Rembrandt decided not to follow the advice that was given to young painters, which was to travel to Italy to learn  Italian art . Rembrandt had felt that he would learn everything from the art of his own country. 

Self Portrait at the Age of 63. 1669.

In Rembrandt's paintings there is a similarity between them all in the lighting set up. It is quite a warm light.

Nick Lepard

" My goal is to reflect people in the modern world , but not the modern world itself. " 

Nick Lepard's paintings convey the human not in complete control. "In a world that is constantly changing , and here one minute , gone the next."

Lepard's motivation lies in the mystery of his chosen medium " painting is like trying to solve a mystery. The mystery for me is how to create a painting that will capture the audience's attention and keep it for as long as possible. Right now images are not something we spend much time looking at something we then quickly move onto the next thing. To keep someone looking to have them paused on a single stationary image."

Looking at the way Lepard thinks has made me think about my paintings. I think I am trying to capture the same emotion of wanting to keep someone interested in your image that you are displaying. 

I think that the thing that interests me most about his paintings is that you can tell what it is you are looking at but you can also tell that is a painting there is a sense of freedom about it which is a joy to look at.

Another thing that is attracting me to these paintings is the choice of colour as it is much more brighter tones then a Jonathon Yeo painting which has a lot of earth tones. I enjoy how vibrant these colours are. 

The portraits capture the models personality , with the many layers of paint that make it so intriguing .

From my group critique I was given this artist to look at. I really like their work. I think that the style is really effective as it draws you to look at the person being portrayed. I also like the way the marks are made they feel like dream like especially with the choice of colours used. Since my crit I have thought about how I would like to move my project forward with individual faces I think that also experimenting with brush marks making them more free like this would be another way to go as it will create a dream like feel to the paintings. 

I really want to experiment with my brush marks as Nick Lepard creates his brush marks to form the face which is what I want to make more clear in my paintings. Making more bold marks. 

Painting

Oil on canvas

Oil on paper

This painting is still a work in progress. I thought this image was intriguing as it was just a big group of people that appeared. I also liked the different emotions in the peoples faces which is like analysing their body language and enhancing some actions more than others like the man pointing his finger. 

Prismacolour pencils on board (composition idea)

Even though the last image is coloured pencil I think I am going to paint it but use different brush marks to get a different overall feel. I think it will be visually interesting to see it in two different mediums and what effects they both bring. Also the colours will be different. 

Composition ideas for painting.

For painting I started off by taking photographs like these. I was looking at the idea of exploring the people in the city catching them off guard. 

For the images I did crop them to decide what composition I wanted . I then started to draw continuous line drawings from the images. 

2013

2013

These drawings are ideas for paintings. In some of the compositions I put more than one photo together as I thought that it worked and enhanced the original composition as they may have the same expression or are looking the same way , which looks visually interesting as you wonder what they appear to be looking at.

oil on board (a4 board) 

Pencil on paper ( a5 Sketchbook )

Before I started the painting I worked out what composition would work best. 

Oil on board

(Work in progress)

I started to look at my photos and analyse them to make them work into a composition. For this painting I took two different images and cropped them and then put them together. From looking at the drawing and the painting I have decided that I need to change my  painting slightly as it does not look quite right. The jaw line is too thin and the hair line is also not wide enough . Another thing that I need to change is the eyebrows as it does not show his emotion as that is one of the things that I am focussing on.

I also need to change the drawing of the woman as it is not quite right. It is useful seeing them next to each other as I can see where I am going wrong.

Painting in different tones of white. With blue , yellow and red backgrounds. Making as many grey tones as possible. 

Painting