Eric Alexander Santoli
  • HOME
  • ABOUT
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • PERSONAL STATEMENT
  • COMMISSIONS
    • EXAMPLES
    • TESTIMONIALS
  • PORTFOLIO
    • DRAWINGS
    • WATERCOLORS
    • OIL PAINTINGS
  • LINKS
  • CONTACT
  • BLOG

-Study in Imagination-

12/18/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
   Every couple of months, I like to give myself the task of painting a head completely from my imagination.  As sort of a test of my current knowledge of proportion and structure.  So a couple of days ago I completed this head study after warming up my imagination with some sketching in my journal.  I feel good about the way it turned out so I made a small black frame for it with some iridescent gold to highlight it.  It's a small study, 9" X 12", which allowed me to finish it in a single morning.  By working from my head, it's not always easy to find specific features, but you can focus on capturing a sense of expression instead of making it look like a portrait of someone.
     I used a fairly limited palette for this one.  Silver White, Naples Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Burnt Sienna, Asphaltum and Cadmium Red Light.  I may have dipped into my Cobalt or Viridian to cool down, but I don't really pay too much attention to my color mixing.  Maybe it's because I'm colorblind, but I really try to focus on the value, instead of the color.  This is also painted rather loosely into a contour outline and quickly modeled.  I think the fresh quality is beautiful in a way that is different from a finished piece.  The ground that I am working on is an oil ground that I prepared myself and tinted with Mars Brown and Ivory Black.
      I used to study Vermeer quite a bit, and the more I studied him, the more I realized the power of his creativity--to make things more beautiful.  "Tronies" are an interesting concept, they are the exaggeration of features and sort of the "idealized  beauty." that comes to the artists mind.  The artists asks "What is my ideal sense of proportion?"  I think this has to do a lot of the style of each artist.  To create his or her own canon of beauty.

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013

    Categories

    All
    Academic
    Animation
    Canvas
    Classical Work
    Color
    Colorblindness
    Comics
    Composition
    Disney
    Drawing
    EAS Custom Canvas
    Ebook
    Edgar Allen Poe
    Figurative
    Frames
    Funny
    Haruki Murakami
    Hayao Miyazaki
    Illustration
    Imagination
    Innovation
    Joaquin Sorolla
    John Singer Sargent
    Life Size
    Manga
    Motorcycles
    Music
    Novus Atelier
    Oil Painting
    Painting
    Pet Portraits
    Philosophy
    Portraiture
    Prints
    Progress
    Reading
    Realism
    Reviews
    Signature
    Skateboarding
    Sketching
    Studies
    Studio Ghibli
    Teaching
    Technique
    Varnishing
    Watercolor
    William Adolphe Bouguereau
    Writing

    RSS Feed

    MAILING LIST SIGNUP

SIGN UP

 © ERIC ALEXANDER SANTOLI 2019 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  • HOME
  • ABOUT
    • BIOGRAPHY
    • PERSONAL STATEMENT
  • COMMISSIONS
    • EXAMPLES
    • TESTIMONIALS
  • PORTFOLIO
    • DRAWINGS
    • WATERCOLORS
    • OIL PAINTINGS
  • LINKS
  • CONTACT
  • BLOG