When Chris first explained the task, I was looking forward to doing all of the research, wanting to find some amazing old artist who painted simply, beautifully but also realistically. Imagining, looking for all the details such as brushstrokes, textures and layers of paint on a canvas. So I was excited to learn from them and create my own piece of work.
To start I had to find that Amazing artist so I thought about looking through the library to find an artist book and then choose from that. But a while after looking I just couldn't find one that really took my interest. So I gave up on that idea and decided to look online.
Whilst I was in the Lab I started searching again but I couldn't think of Artist names to search for, so somewhere through looking for one, I got distracted and got on Google maps and discovered a little tool where you could walk around cities. Soon I was virtually walking around Derby and I followed my bus route to college, as you do, and saw the derby art gallery.
At this point I thought it would be a great Idea to go there and look for an artist as I also needed to go home on the weekend. I visited the gallery website and found that they displayed the work of Joseph Wright (at this point Chris was there next to me and made a comment that my chosen artist must be good because of the second name.) Anyway I saw some images of his work and was looking forward to seeing it myself.
As planned, on Saturday morning I got the train to Derby and walked to the Museum. After a while of walking around I finally recognised one of Wright's paintings. I was surprised to the size of it and how amazing it really was. After a few moments of admiring it I realised that the whole room was full his work. I had a look around but this painting was already my favourite. So there I was staring at it, when the curator came up to me and started talking to me, he went on and on about the artist I don’t even remember what he said. But he let me take pictures of the painting so he was all good.
As I came to painting a final for this, I decided to concentrate on some of the close-up photos I took of the painting, so did 2 samples just as experiments.
For the final I cropped the painting down to the part I wanted to concentrate on the most and started to sketch it on Photoshop. I started on an empty layer with a neutral fill background layer. Whilst i was painting this, I was constantly looking back at the painting and trying to copy the brushstroke directions and sizes.
I noticed that the artist had also used different brushes for different areas, as the female’s body is very smooth, however the tree trunk behind her looks rough and textured. To finish it all off I applied a canvas texture on the whole painting.
Original painting -> here
