Mahatma Gandhi
The first exercise I have attempted out of Juliette Aristedes Classical Painting book is to try my hand at a monochromatic master copy painting. I chose Marie Genevieve Bouliard's self-portrait for many reasons but mainly because I have long wanted to try my hand at portrait painting and thought using a very limited palette might make the process a little easier. For my painting above I used only zinc white, ivory black, burnt sienna, and burnt umber. I mixed a value range from 1 to 10. Although my Genevieve doesn't look so much like the original Genevieve I was happy with the overall result. I was more than amazed at how only two colors with the addition of black and white produced such a range of depth in the final piece.
The next chapter discusses value ~ very interesting! According to Ms. Aristedes "the portrayal of light and shadow is itself one of the driving forces behind most successful works of art ~ infinitely greater than the most carefully rendered inventory of objects." Sounds to me she wouldn't be too disappointed in my Genevieve either. I am still going back to my drawing board, however, as my ultimate goal is to paint paintings that actually look like the subject!
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