Painting a Day - Week 6

I recently spent time looking through assorted art books in my school's library and came across one that featured various Expressionist artists. I typically love this art genre and was curious when I found a painting by Jean Brusselmans that sparked my interest.

After researching him, I found that I was drawn to his seascapes in particular and was thinking that his use of a limited color palette and bold brush strokes would be a fun direction to explore.

Inspiration:

Clouds Above the Sea, 1952

Grey Weather, 1952

A Misty Sea, 1952

The Dunes, 1938

My Works:

First work

Second painting

Third work

Fourth painting

Reflection:

I really enjoyed painting landscapes this week that were influenced by Brusselmans style! As mentioned in my Week 1 post where I attempted some of my first landscapes with a Richard Claremont twist, landscapes are still newer to me. However, these seascape paintings I was studying by Brusselmans really resonated with me due to their soothing colors and simplicity. I enjoyed getting to paint loosely and with much thinner paint than what I had used for Claremont's!

One of my big takeaways this week was understanding the importance of direction of brushstrokes. As these Brusselmans paintings are simplified with wide brushstroke marks and touches of color, it forced me to be more intentional when mixing a color and placing it while also following the general lines of a landscape or clouds. In this way I worked to convey the energy of my favorite setting on campus - the breezy bluffs with their view of the river. I also loved studying this setting at different times of day and in different phases of weather patterns which I then tried to capture in my works!

Painting 1 -

My first attempt was a start in familiarizing myself with the thin paint and intentional brushstrokes of Brusselmans. Color-wise, I didn't completely stick to the gray-tone paint palette of Brusselmans (as my landscape took on various greens and blues), but I did abstain from using my whole paint palette in this one which I'm usually tempted to do. Although I don't mind how some canvas shows through where my paint became really thin, I didn't like quite how thinned out some of my color was.

Overall, this painting felt more like my natural painting style as I could move quickly through the landscape and focus more on depicting the essence of the setting instead of its realistic details.

Painting 2 -

I enjoyed working on this painting... the weather on this morning was cold, and a full fog had rolled in among the trees around the river. I loved how still the scene looked and the slow movements of the winding fog. With this inspiration, I wanted to focus on capturing these characteristics in my painting. I worked on more consistent washes of color while still keeping the paint thin, and I felt like this painting was a more abstracted and simplified landscape than my first painting of the week!

Painting 3 -

My third painting I based off of The Dunes by Brusselmans. My goal while trying to mimic his technique of painting was to similarly recreate the horizontal sunset sky and utilize short brushstrokes to represent both the clouds in the background and the foliage in the foreground. I wish I had mixed colors a bit differently in this piece as I don't love how this one turned out, but it was a different approach compared to my first two paintings of the week with the color it involved.

Painting 4 -

This painting was by far my favorite of the week and felt like a much stronger landscape to me! I think the difference with this piece was that Brusselmans style felt more intuitive after the three previous paintings, and as his style already semi-aligned with a way of painting that I gravitate toward, I let more instinct take over with this painting. It ended up with more color and thicker paint than Brusselmans grayed-out seascapes I was looking at, however, it felt like the color helped capture the setting more.

Overall -

Studying Brusselmans work this week was definitely one of my favorite studies so far - I was surprised by how much I enjoyed painting loose seascapes, but I think the excuse to paint the river that our campus overlooks was what made it so much fun. I always love the scenery from our bluffs, and painting in a way that was influenced by Brusselmans made it more of an enjoyable week than trying Claremont's landscapes which seemed more technical to me during Week One.

Each of these paintings took less time than my previous paintings have as well. I spent probably an average of 30 minutes per painting this week as I hoped to keep the paintings simple and not build up color by re-doing areas over and over again which also takes time. I had a lot of fun working in this way and am hoping to keep doing quick paintings of the river now!