Sorrolla Study: Painting Colour Comps

 

For this study I mainly wanted to focus on the colour and light composition and capturing how the artist has grouped the values. I particularly struggled applying the transition of values working straight in colour and conveying the hue shifts that's convincing and aesthetically pleasing.

Joaquín Sorolla study and exploring colours and value range

 

This Sorolla painting proved to be honestly very challenging for me to replicate his use of colour and painterly brush textures. This study gave me the opportunity to dive in and experiment a bit with the brush properties that was both enjoyable and eye opening to achieve a range of interesting effects and and quality to the surface. The dynamic colour option I particularly had fun playing with. 

Another study of Joaquin Sorrolla work.

 

Been picking away at this piece for the last 2 weeks or so. The goal with this study was to the capture and copy as much as I possibly could without relying on too many digital tricks. Experimenting with the brushes to get quality and feel of real paint. I particularly struggled with capturing the saturation around the face but overall I am pleased what I have managed to accomplish with the piece.

Getting back to greyscale painting

 

In continuing studying from Sorolla paintings, this week I committed to just painting one of his works in greyscale with the three value approach method and gradually building on top. This non destructive process allowed me to more experiment with the mixer brush without loosing the over form and structure of the piece as I was intent of where I put my first two values focusing on the light and dark shapes. I really like this process as it helps me to commit early on not get bog down trying to figure out the lighting and composition halfway through a painting. It really gets you to build a good foundation first to paint on top of and gradually build up. Next week my intention is too continue building on greyscale painting. 

October Artist Study_ Joaquín Sorolla

Recently had the urge to get back into studying master's of the past, so I decided  for the remainder of this month I would look and analyse the works of Joaquín Sorolla and his masterful paintings, in attempt to learn his approach to colour and composition and his methods of grouping values when composing a pleasing image. I feel as though I have learnt a great deal from this experience and still have a lot more to learn about the theory behind light and colour. 

What was most notable about this painting is about how the artist effectively made use of subtle hue and temperature shifts and in the wide range of colour particularly in the figures jacket as well as other surrounding areas in the piece. I also really like how he has made the distribution of his shapes with in a square image canvas which I often find difficult to work with. 

Overall I am pleased how much I was able to accomplish in the week and what I got out from this  artist. I would say the area I most struggled with was identifying the form of the subjects hands and keeping transition of values subtle yet recognisable. The other area would be sleeves where I could pick out subtle greenish grey tones and yet not make it too jarring or prominent to the viewer.

In the coming in weeks I plan to look at more of Sorolla paintings and try to see what more I can pick out from this great master. Perhaps maybe look into how he construct his values, by producing a series of black and white or greyscale studies of his painting.

Process and Approaches to painting

 

This assignment got me to explore a range of techniques and approaches to painting digitally. This was the first lesson of Sam Nielsen's lighting for story class. I fully enjoyed this exercise and experimented each process by combining a variety of steps and mixing them together to develop new approaches of painting that is both efficient and flexible leaving enough freedom for creativity. 

Hatching Light and shadow

This assignments was a review on indicating shadow and light by a method of directional hatching and building forms by following the contours of the figure, each study was roughly 45min. The biggest challenge was getting the strokes to describe the direction of the structure of the plane and hatching with consistency as well as with confidence and intent without loosing any of the underlying foundation. I thoroughly enjoyed this assignment and would definitely come back to doing these exercises again in the future as a warm up. It has been a different experience as this method of building form and light has been new to me and something that i wish to continue perhaps implementing in future pieces. Further more continue to develop and build on as i experiment more with this kind of technique and approach.