Blog-Style of a Famous Artist

Question: Did you find inspiration from another artist or culture?

(This was my reference painting)

---I took inspiration from the well-known artist, Winslow Homer. He was known for his realistic paintings of the seaside, lakes, oceans, or any sight of bodies of water. He kept his paintings very scenic and peaceful. So, for this style project I copied his kind of visual. I painted a lake with a sunset background; and to make the visual look like an actual place, I painted the lighthouse and a shelter on the right side of the painting. Homer was also known for his unique style of blending different colors together to make the visual bright and attractive. I used his style by blending a lot of yellow, orange, red, and pink together for the evening sky. For the reflection of the sky onto the water, I added more black to have it a lot darker than the sky; this made it look like there were little pools of water in the lake. Homer had most of his personal life spent near a lighthouse, so I decided to choose a painting where I could include a specific object/building that was special to the artist. 

Question: How did you respond to challenges that occurred as you worked?

----One problem I faced was painting the lighthouse. Initially, I had not sketched the lighthouse correctly and it turned out a little crooked and not exactly straight. After I discovered this problem, I had to cut off some of the right side of lighthouse and paint white over it in order to make the lighthouse look wider. Then, I painted more black on the left side border so it shifted to the center more. Another problem I faced was making sure I didn't blend the wrong colors together. A lot of the painting consisted of black, so it was important that I didn't mix the darker colors with the bright oranges and reds. Especially with sun, I didn't want my brush to have any other color but pure yellow on it. Another challenge was painting the rock, where the lighthouse/shelter stand on. I didn't want to make it pure black or pure gray because that's not part of Homer's style. Homer was into blending colors, so I decided to mix green, dark purple, black, and white together to create this "rocky" looking sediment for the rock. 

Question: Did you learn new techniques or processes as part of the work?

----One technique I learned was how before you start your painting, you have to add a tone wash across your canvas. This helps with areas of dark colors and areas of light colors throughout the painting. Since I had more black on the bottom half of the canvas, I figured more tone had to be painted there. I also learned the technique of blending/mixing paints to create random and unique colors. An example of this would be on the left side of the water, where you can see a tint of purple and blue. I also like how the purple in the sky really stood out because I painted the shaded purple on top and the tinted purple on the bottom, giving it somewhat of a contrast. Another technique that helped was sketching lightly on the canvas before actually painting. It helped especially with drawing the basic shapes and borders of the mountain in the background, the lighthouse, the rock, and the sun.