Elle Rêve
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Inspiration & Research
Planning
For my painting, I had my mom pose me while looking at the original painting. She directed how I should sit and place my arms, and took the photos for me. Total, we took around 30 photos, and I used two for reference for my painting, one of which was projected and traced onto my canvas.It took a few times to get the pose right. I also decided to put back my bangs to emulate the original painting a bit more, which came out of the clip and needed to be adjusted.
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Process
First was the building and priming of the canvas.
First, I stapled together four 3-foot-long wooden stretchers with a staple gun. After hammering them a bit to make sure that they were in far enough, I laid the stretchers over unrolled canvas and cut around the stretchers. I left a few inches of canvas around it to wrap around the stretchers far enough. Then, I stapled the canvas to the stretchers, taking care to make the canvas tight against the wood, but not too tight. Afterwards, I applied two coats of gesso in perpendicular directions to avoid having uneven coating.
Next was sketching onto the canvas.
I used a little projector that I had connected to my computer to project the image. I traced the image carefully, accounting for how the canvas stretched as the weight of my had rested on it. It was difficult, considering that I had to stand right in the way of the projector in order to be in position where I could draw effectively. Also, I unfortunately couldn't lay down a background color coat as I wanted. It was simply because I didn't have enough green, yellow, and blue paint to cover a 9 square foot area, and the background of the original piece has a quality of a radiated sillouette, which I couldn't do without the body being there first.
Now comes the actual painting part.
The first thing I painted was the skin. I figured that it would be a bit more forgiving, blending wise. I had a good sense of how different colors worked well in shading of skin. While I was painting the lower arm, however, I ran out of the paint I had mixed up for the skintones. This led to a gross pink/brown arm that I fixed later. After that was my pants, which I chose because it was a good way too clean up the rough edges on the lower arm. Next was the facial features: eyes, eyebrows and lips. These were unexpected difficult despite being a relatively small part of the piece. After that, I painted the hair. It was pretty difficult because my inspiration wasn't very helpful as a reference, as Julie Manet didn't have bright blue dyed hair, so the experimental colors associated with the impressionist style had to be dropped for fear of massively screwing it up. After this will be the shirt, and the background.
Experimentation
Experimenting to create the colors I needed took an obscene amount of time. This was very important when I ran out of color for the skin, and it took at least an hour to mix up a comparable color. Not only this, but most colors took a bit of patience to find the color that seemed right to me. I'm still not satisfied with the color of the lips, despite even putting a small swatch on my own lip. Overall I had to experiment for quite a while to find colors I needed.
Reflection
Overall, I really like how the whole piece came together. The little flaws are only very visible when you look too hard at one part of the painting, and it pretty much looks like me. But, they still do bother me. I feel that the face is somewhat lopsided, that I might have given my nose too dark of a shadow, and that my lips have too much of an outline. There is also too much paint on the lower arm, which makes sections look a bit cakey. I think the hair came out nice, but one could argue that the blue is a bit too strong. If I would start this over, I'd definitely go through it a bit less recklessly. When I painted the hair, I painted over the shadow and highlight sections that I had sketched off. This made making the highlights and shadows difficult, and the blending even more so. I would also just make a giant puddle of skin color paint, of every color I made even, to avoid the dreaded re-mixing of the colors.
My piece is easily comparable to Julie Daydreaming. The essential goal of the piece is to imitate the original, but place myself inside of it. My pose is very similar, but only as similar as it could get due to the likelyhood that Julie Monet had longer limbs than myself. She also wears a loose fitted white dress, and in my attempt to emulate her I wore a comfortable white t-shirt. This is different, but it's my attempt to create essentially a modern day equivalent to the how she's dressed. I also have my bangs pinned back to emulate the way she wore her hair. Within the piece itself however, I didn't do as great a job emulating the style. In the original, she has an exaggerated pale complexion, which I struggled to emulate. I also used acrylic paints rather than the oil paints Morisot used, which made imitating the impressionist style even more difficult than it already was.
My piece is easily comparable to Julie Daydreaming. The essential goal of the piece is to imitate the original, but place myself inside of it. My pose is very similar, but only as similar as it could get due to the likelyhood that Julie Monet had longer limbs than myself. She also wears a loose fitted white dress, and in my attempt to emulate her I wore a comfortable white t-shirt. This is different, but it's my attempt to create essentially a modern day equivalent to the how she's dressed. I also have my bangs pinned back to emulate the way she wore her hair. Within the piece itself however, I didn't do as great a job emulating the style. In the original, she has an exaggerated pale complexion, which I struggled to emulate. I also used acrylic paints rather than the oil paints Morisot used, which made imitating the impressionist style even more difficult than it already was.
ACT Responses
1. Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause-effect relationships between your inspiration and its effect on upon your artwork.
My piece is a direct reference to the original piece that I was inspired by, giving me the pose and colors I have now in the piece.
2. What is the overall approach (point of view) the author (from your research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
That despite Morisot's low amount of success, she was still happy with what she did until the day she died.
3. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc while you researched your inspiration?
I've discovered that sometimes things line up perfectly on accident, the way Julie Daydreaming was the last painting Morisot ever completed. It shows how much she really loved her daughter.
4. What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The details of what Morisot's paintings focused on and the focus of my inspiration specifically.
5. What kind of inferences (conclusions reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning) did you make while reading your research?
That Morisot was a lovely woman, working hard as a housewife the way she was expected to, while still making a career for herself as a painter.
My piece is a direct reference to the original piece that I was inspired by, giving me the pose and colors I have now in the piece.
2. What is the overall approach (point of view) the author (from your research) has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
That despite Morisot's low amount of success, she was still happy with what she did until the day she died.
3. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, cultures, etc while you researched your inspiration?
I've discovered that sometimes things line up perfectly on accident, the way Julie Daydreaming was the last painting Morisot ever completed. It shows how much she really loved her daughter.
4. What was the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
The details of what Morisot's paintings focused on and the focus of my inspiration specifically.
5. What kind of inferences (conclusions reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning) did you make while reading your research?
That Morisot was a lovely woman, working hard as a housewife the way she was expected to, while still making a career for herself as a painter.
Sources
"Julie Daydreaming, 1894 - Berthe Morisot." Www.wikiart.org. WikiArt, n.d. Web.
Blin, Sylvie. "Berthe Morisot." Berthe Morisot - The Art Tribune. La Tribune De L'Art, 25 May 2012. Web.
"Berthe Morisot." Artble. N.p., n.d. Web.
Blin, Sylvie. "Berthe Morisot." Berthe Morisot - The Art Tribune. La Tribune De L'Art, 25 May 2012. Web.
"Berthe Morisot." Artble. N.p., n.d. Web.