For my final week of small series paintings, I've selected Richard Diebenkorn as my inspiration! As I've been enjoying sampling abstract styles, his various works of still life, figure, and colorful paintings stood out to me. The following paintings are ones I studied when trying to imitate his ways of painting.
Inspiration:
My Works:
Reflection:
Painting this week was much more enjoyable for me than the past couple weeks of oil studies which have been more frustrating with abstraction. Although I struggled overall to diversify my color palette among these four paintings, the way in which I was able to paint felt really free and natural... The looseness of Diebenkorn's style resonated with me as did the colors I got to work with!
Painting 1 -
This first painting intimidated me as I was tentative doing a total abstract again following my de Kooning week. By now I realize just how challenging abstraction can be and I was really wanting to paint better after learning from trial and error with the de Kooning's. To start this piece, I put down a varied but dark underpainting to build off of. Although Diebenkorn's abstracts tend to be more isolated blocks of geometric color with lines in between, as I was attempting to preserve certain areas of colors that seemed strong, I let this organic composition remain.
Painting 2 -
I love painting figures in general but was not quite sure how to go about this one. The looseness of the form with strong color and a unique position were interesting elements to experiment with. I was inspired by Diebenkorn's Girl Squatting painting and worked to do a somewhat headless composition in my piece as well. Although the shapes and colors from my dark underpainting feel like they work, I might come back to the small shape under the figure's arm in the near future to build up that blue so it's not pure underpainting that feels so flat.
Painting 3 -
I think this one is my favorite piece from the week. I was inspired by a still life scene that had happened spontaneously in one of the art studios on campus when someone placed a coffee mug and clementine on a water fountain one day... Amused by this idea, I photographed it and decided to paint it as a still life! I think my freedom in which I painted this piece felt best, and the colors and value played off each other within the abstraction.
Painting 4 -
This last painting was interesting as I didn't have a Diebenkorn painting to work off of specifically in this composition. I was intrigued by the shapes and setting of this cafe photo I had on my camera roll and decided to put down color as I thought Diebenkorn would. This too felt loose and comfortable but could probably be developed more...
Overall -
This week, painting like Diebenkorn felt more natural to me than I had expected. Although I specifically chose works of his that were less abstract than his famous geometric compositions, I appreciated getting to paint loosely with bold color and noticeable brush strokes as he did. I learned a lot about compositional organization and still have such great respect for artists like him who can do abstracts successfully!