Painting a Day - Week 4

I was inspired this week to try landscape painting again! Instead of my take on a modern artist, Richard Claremont, however, I'm going back to Matisse whose use of color and composition inspires me. His purposeful brush strokes and color schemes are something I'm hoping to emanate in this week's paintings!

Inspiration:

Landscape at Collioure, summer 1905

Les Genêts (1905)

Moroccan Landscape (1913)

Olive Trees at Collioure (1906)

My Works:

My First Attempt

Second Painting

Third Painting

Reflection:

This week provided some challenges with painting... I think it's the first main point this semester where I've really missed the freedom of painting in my own comfortable style. I love the learning that's going on while pushing myself each week, but it's hard not to want to just resort back to the usual at the same time. :)

I love Matisse's paintings though, and I now have a much greater appreciation for the techniques he uses!

Painting 1 -

This painting did not come about without lots of struggling and did not end up resembling much of Matisse's signature style. Olive Trees at Collioure was my inspiration for this piece and I somehow decided that a lemon-lime colored underpainting would be helpful to work with instead of a white canvas at the start. Sadly, this completely threw me off as I painted, and when I believed the work was finished and stepped back, I was not pleased at all with the rainbow of muddy colors I had spread all over my canvas in short brushstrokes. I knew it was worthy of me overstepping the 1 hr time limit for adjustment's sake in this new style of painting. Therefore, I smeared absolutely everything I'd just painted all over the canvas while it was wet to create a new underpainting that is the current dark background to my painting.

At this point, I was just wanting to find closure with this piece, so I struggled through placing color in my landscape more carefully (this time with a smaller brush) and finished up the work. I worked to emulate a similar color palette to Matisse overall, but the brownish underpainting didn't particularly help this goal.

Painting 2 -

This piece was based off of Matisse's Moroccan Landscape in both composition and colors. I painted it during the same day as my first attempt and had already learned a lot more about what to do and what not to do while starting the painting process. My multi-colored and more thoughtfully placed underpainting constructed the finished painting as I tried to preserve white space throughout the piece. My thick brush didn't give me the same control as the piece I was inspired by, but it did help me loosen up with my composition. Overall, this full painting feels more similar to Matisse's style even if not accurately so, and it seemed like progress after attempt #1.

Painting 3 -

My third painting was meant to loosely replicate Landscape at Collioure by Matisse. After not truly capturing the master artist's style of painting in my first two pieces, this one was intended to mimic color and brushstrokes more specifically. The time spent mimicking Matisse's painting in my 45 minute session taught me a lot more about color mixing and style.

Personally, it felt weird to not have an underpainting and to instead paint straight onto bare canvas while leaving so much pure white still exposed in the end result. Matisse's work of thinned out paint and brushstrokes in varied length (as opposed to Van Gogh's consistent short marks) was also interesting to specifically incorporate in this piece. Although this color palette was more similar to that of Matisse's work, I didn't succeed in purely matching enough of his colors in retrospect.

Overall -

There was no time for me to do a fourth painting this week, but I had a lot of take aways from my paintings this week regardless. In the coming weeks, I will really be trying to improve my color awareness and thoughtfulness when mixing and placing paint and am looking forward to the improvement in this direction!