Activity 8.1
I did an online search for information about Matisse and the Fauvist artists. Very crudely put I took away the notion that the use of colour and approach to painting gave the work a slightly two dimensional effect and the use of colour was bold and strong with a rough sense of shade. I was surprised to find Braque in this group of painters as I'd only seen his cubist work - in brown, and I think maybe some birds - before. The paintings all had an immediate accessible and desirably decorative appeal. In particular I liked the following paintings:
Matisse
Ilya Mashkov
Albert Marquet
Derain
Kees van Dongen
Activity 8.2 Paint a still life using a photograph as the source.
I started off by putting together a composition and taking lots of photographs - thank you for your advice. I was able of course to do this with a great deal of leisure. I processed the pictures through my laptop into black and white so I was able to get a clear view of the shade - as we looked at in an earlier chapter. In the end I decided on the following picture:
Unfortunately at this point I came down with a cold and ended using both the oranges and the lemons so it was a while before I was able to return to this composition. Looking at it now it seems rather tame compared to those original images I saved but I expect I was erring on the side of achievability.
I made a tracing of the original, which I felt was a bit of a cheat but I could feel my apprehension growing by this stage
And so you can gauge the size:
Then I got stuck in
I gave up on the background at this point as I was unhappy with where it was leading me and concentrated on other areas of the painting / study Concentrating on the fruit
At this point I revisited the background and put a lighter layer over the base leaving some of the darker shade to serve as a rough shadow
Then I painted in the glass plate on the cake stand
And actually I was really quite happy with this. It had been a more manageable activity than I had anticipated and using acrylics meant I was able to paint over things with ease. I'm not sure it was very Matisse tho'
A few details:
Activity 8.3 Painting a still life from observation
This was a different task altogether. I made two starts on this finding it tremendously difficult. I think it was hard for a number of reasons: a) there was no limit to the composition, i.e' photographs have a clearly composed area, b) there wasn't the security of a photograph to check on to see how it was looking c) there was something very immediate about this task which meant I felt it had to be achieved in one go. I got around the issue of light by propping the background board under a spotlight so the light source stayed consistent. This time round I used a patterned fabric and a dishevelled base cloth. This basecloth gave all the problems. Fortunately I was so engrossed I forgot to take many photographs
Working in A3 and acrylics throughout
First go
I gave up with this at this point as I was concerned about the base and the background.
Second Go
I was really pleased with the patterned fabric and actually thought it did have a fauvist quality to it but clearly the base cloth required a more thorough grounding in light and shade than I currently have. This picture really does have a two dimensional quality to it and the lemons are way off but looking at it now I'm not unhappy with this work. I'm surprised and shamed by how observing from real life is so very different from working from a photograph and it's a salutary lesson.
Some details:
It may be time to increase my range of acrylics as I'm still working with the 8 shades I bought for chapter with some buff titanium and paynes grey thrown in.
Extra Activity.
This was fun..... I used a number of software apps, none of which I'm really familiar with.
And one or two worked really well
And me at the end of this exercise, by Kees van Dongen
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