For my spring semester watercolor class, I decided to do a mastercopy demonstration of Johannes Vermeer's (1632 - 1675), Het Straatje (The Little Street). The original is an oil painting and hangs at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.
I started off by drawing accurate proportions for the buildings. In hindsight, I should have spent more time on the drawing stage because my proportions are off and my building is tilted. Buildings and structures require more precision when drawing. After my pencil work, I began painting the sky and then moved on to paint the buildings section by section. I always try to work each layer from general to specific; many of the details were done in the final session. I also used gouache to achieve certain effects such as the mortar between the bricks. I learned several things over the course of this project. I'm usually a very fast painter which serves me well when working en plein air; but this painting required patience and a discerning eye. I've worked on it since March and yet I still see so many things to add and improve. The brickwork alone is an endless pursuit. I'll keep working on it here and there and I'm planning to frame it some day. This mastercopy is allowing me to really appreciate the fact that Vermeer was a brilliant painter with a mind-boggling level of skill.
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This information comes from a great book which I came across last year. I wrote a BLOG POST about the book which I also encourage you to check out.
There's some great information in the book and technical insight which is interesting. Click the file link to hear my reading and additional commentary. I've been working on a series of self portraits lately and most of them haven't turned out well. Since I've been struggling with them I decided to try a watercolor. I've always felt more comfortable with a brush and I feel like the stars aligned tonight.
I'm happy with this self portrait because it looks like me, but it also feels like me. This is something that's hard to put into words, but I try to capture that feeling in every portrait that I paint. The physical likeness mostly comes from proportion, but I'm not quite sure where the deeper feeling comes from. I also had some good realizations with this self portrait and it developed smoothly. I started off with an accurate underdrawing in pencil and then focused on the overall forms before I developed the detail. Yesterday, I was sketching late at night and it hit me how important the underlying form and structure is. For instance, if I sketch a face the detail has to sit on top of the form. There are a lot of elements involved with any painting, but I think this idea of form before detail is very important. This advice is from a catalogue that was from a 1984 - 85 Bouguereau exhibition. I haven't come across it in other places so I wanted to share it here. Enjoy!
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