Photoshop lessons have begun once again and the first session was
on the art of the master study. Which overall felt like they went fairly
well, some studies came out better than others but I feel happy that
for most of them as the tonal range is still fairly close to that of the
original. We were all informed at the beginning of the year that the
reason old paintings were selected was because after decades, even
centuries of scrutiny, the quality of these paintings still held up well
in the eyes of generations of critics and I can understand the logic
behind this.
Each of these were done under time constraints so some of them look barely started compared to the finsihed work. But even so I felt a little surpised at how skewed the top portrait is (The pictures are upside down out of recoomendation by Jordan, suggesting that by looking at the face upside down I might be less inclined to see it as a face and more a collection of shapes. It kind-of worked). I feel my composition of this man's face by the end seem a little jarring: His coat is fairly accurate, maybe a little loosely painted, but his face is definitely something that looks like it needs improvement. He also looks angry.
The portrait and the picture just above were composed by John Singer-Sergeant. And this one due ot it's complexity I plan to further work on at some point. So an improved version will come soon. Especially since I had ended up going slightly off-track while painting, completing the woman before anything else.
Being a first lesson, Jordan wasn't expecting near-flawless replications and I'm both glad and understanding of that decision - these paintings probably took several hours, broken into several stints, and for each of these all I had was half an hour. Maybe a little more. ALthough then again I had it a little easier: No paint drying times and this was a copying effort isntead of creating something where only the eyes are the lens and the framing.
