Thursday, March 04, 2010

The Human Form 2

So painting is hard. I'm struggling, but I've borrowed some books from the library and I'm trying to read everything about painter's techniques and them put them into practice. It helps when I can see the paintings in the flesh.

Just that happened on Tuesday when I went to the Graves Gallery in old Sheffers town. I'd been peering at a Walter Sickert painting for hours trying to figure out how he'd painted it from the description of his technique and it just wasn't going in. Then I stumble in that very painting when I'd gone to see something completely different. Joy, happiness and wonderment as I actually got to be an inch away from the painting and got look really look at the brush strokes and how the underpainting was visible in places, the lightness and looseness of the top painting. Fantastic. I'm never going to assume local libraries and galleries don't have something worth seeing in the end.

This is the painting I was looking at. It's just astounding in real life. Its called the Soldiers of King Albert the Ready. Painted in 1914 by Walter Sickert.

This is my latest painting. I've clearly got a very long way to go. I'm gong to try some underpainting in the style of Walter Sickert. Eventually I will get it, it's just a matter of persevering and practicing other people's techniques.

2 comments:

Quilt Architect said...

I like your foot painting. It looks like it is in the water. I imagine that was hard to do. Very impressionistic.

The fearless threader said...

Thanks, actually the background was incredibly easy. I used white and phthalo green in a rough mix with a palette knife to just scrape across the paper to create the background. The reflection at the bottom is just cadmium red mixed into the paint with the knife. I'm very pleased with this as I am not a natural painter.