During December of 2013, I was honored to paint a memorial portrait of Tyler Clementi for the Clementi family. The portrait was recently featured on a CBS Sunday Morning segment on the upcoming 5th anniversary of his death.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/remembering-tyler-clementi/
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I had some extra paint left over on my palette so I decided to do a quick 2hr master study from Bouguereau. I learned two things while working on this:
1. It's better to start with accurate values in the ebauche instead of toning up or down. I often times start an oil painting with darker tones and then work up, but it's better to adjust tones based on accurate values right off the bat. 2. Use large brushes. It's always better to go for large planes and work in the detail later. I was doing some research recently and came across a beautiful image from an article that I have to share. The image perfectly captures Bouguereau's frottis, rub-in technique from a painting titled: Venus with Doves circa 1879, (Oil on canvas 32-1/8" x 18-3/8").
I have seen images of this painting before, but never an accurate image like this. It's from an article entitled, "Revolution in Paint" by Perry Hunt, which is a fascinating article and I encourage you to read it. This Bouguereau is on page 4 of that article. You can zoom in on the image since it's a PDF. http://ncartmuseum.org/pdf/revolution-guide.pdf Aside from going and seeing the painting yourself, this is the best way to study technique. You can see how loose, but precise his colors and tones are. You can also see how he finished the figure first and left the background to be completed later. Even the inked line is visible outlining the doves. It definitely taught me a lot. |
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