An update to my last entry on the work in progress on my copy of Bouguereau's portrait of Gabrielle Cot. After finding the high res image of the original master work I was not completley satisfied with the touchup I had done. I reworked some portions of the piece and the image posted now is of the final work and a bit more to my liking. It was a wonderful learning experience and I hope everyone enjoys it.
Hi folks. Just some quick comments and thoughts about my latest work, a copy after William Bouguereau's portrait of Gabrielle Cot from 1890. I have always wanted to try my hand at doing a copy of an old master painting just for the challenge and experience if nothing else. While the options of choices are endless I finally decided on this particular painting mainly because of the style and masterful lifelike qualities it presents as a portrait. While some may not even know who Bouguereau was and not consider him a true "master" such as Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer and others, the truth is his technique of rendering human flesh was about as good as it gets. This particular portrait has been praised by some as one of the finest examples of realist portraiture ever executed.(I would hesitate to say it is or isnt; i havent seen them all! not to mention i have seen some masterful works done by current realist artists that are stunning) I wont get into all the debates concerning what constitutes a great portrait or painting for that matter. That can of worms can go on forever. But nobody can question the techinal execution of his work. The man knew how to manipulate paint. The biggest challenge I faced was finding the source image to paint from. While there is a good image at Art Renewel Center and other sources, it had some major drawbacks. It appeared to be a highly contrasted image and the fleshtones were somewhat washed out compared to all other examples of his work i had seen. I finally found one cropped version that appeared to have the natural tones intact but it was a very low resolution image. So to compromise, i used the hi res contrasty image from ARC for the preliminary drawing and tried to use the low res version for the fleshtones....unfortunately the hair was cropped out!...ARGH....btw the original is in a private collection so.....no trip to a museum for research....anyway.....once i finished the painting and was ready to take a pic to post it I ran across a super hi res image with perfect color et al. right down to the individual cracks in the paint !!.......lol....now i find it!...anyway i did my best to retouch the painting the best i could without starting over from scratch so i hope my results arent to far off.....enough blather for now....hope you all enjoy it
Hi All. Been awhile since my last post. Karen and I just returned from an amazing exhibit of Norman Rockwell's work at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville. Absolutely stunning to see some of his original artwork up close. I have seen reproductions of nearly all the works that were on display but I can honestly say the best prints don't do these originals justice in terms of his outstanding technique. One should see the originals in person to really appreciate the talent of this master artist.
I will be posting more new work soon as I am focusing for the time being on floral paintings and landscapes. The painting shown here is called 'little showoff' ; a 12 x 16 oil of one of Karen's many wonderful flowers (an African Daisy) in our backyard. I will soon be adding a shopping cart and offering fine art prints so check back soon for updates.
