Painting a Day - Week 2

This week's inspiration is a favorite big name artist of mine - Van Gogh. The style of this Post-Impressionist whose paintings are typically made up of short, consistent brush strokes and apply a certain family of color have always stood out to me.

As still life paintings provide an opportunity for detailed studying of this master's technique, I plan to create three or four oil painting studies this week of still life settings while reproducing Van Gogh's style.

Inspiration:

"Still Life with Basket and Six Oranges"

"Vase with Twelve Sunflowers"

"Shoes"

My Works:

The following four paintings are in chronological order of painting in the past week.

My First Attempt

Second Shoe Attempt

Third Painting

Final Painting & Still Life

Reflection:

This week's painting process felt more smooth than Week 1 which was enjoyable... although it still pushed me in many ways!

Painting 1 -

This first painting was a tough adjustment coming from a week of implementing Claremont's techniques and then switching to such a different style as Van Gogh's. I did no underpainting but later found it hard to provide a solid background of color using just short brushstrokes as a result. The background became very textured and didn't include much diversity in color. Additionally, my perspective of the shoes while painting was not ideal for a strong composition and I regret rushing through this important part of set up. A strength in this painting was holding to a more set color scheme instead of using a full palette of color as I had when doing Claremont work.

Painting 2 -

After feeling less than satisfied with my first shoes painting I decided to attempt this subject again for my second painting. This time, I used a smaller brush and was determined not to let my texture build up too quickly with brush strokes becoming as thick with paint. The color palette for this painting was a more toned down one and I worked to mimic the sectional feel in the background of Van Gogh's "Shoes" painting which I was inspired by. This end product felt more successful in fulfilling my intended style and composition, and it was exciting to compare to the previous painting I'd done to see what I'd already learned from a new style and subject matter.

Painting 3 -

This painting was inspired by "Still Life with Basket and Six Oranges" by Van Gogh in a similar color scheme and use of brushstroke techniques. I decided to paint a photo of grapefruit halves which gave me room to interpret color but was also challenging as I didn't love the composition and decided to make it more abstracted. I feel like this piece allowed me to blend background colors into each other more strongly, and this exercise taught me the value in switching brush stroke direction to add movement in a piece.

Painting 4 -

Applying an underpainting to this piece was crucial in developing this. Although this painting feels less "Van Gogh stylized", and more true to my personal style of painting, I worked to apply elements from his floral still life which was my original inspiration. The faintly outlined vase and the dual-colored background of the master's sunflower painting were both ideas I worked to develop, but my color scheme in this painting did expand more than anticipated.

Overall -

This week's series of four paintings pushed me to think more purposefully about using brushstrokes. The way in which Van Gogh builds texture and places color through brush stroke repetition is something I hadn't considered before and it pushed me to be more intentional. However, it felt restricting in other ways as I wanted to do large washes in other sections instead of consistently using short marks.

I'm looking forward to continuing to practice limiting my paint palette to fewer colors again and to keep testing out various styles of painting in the coming weeks!