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| River Basin at Argenteuil - Claude Monet 1872 |
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| Starting to paint |
The best way to revamp your painting style is to copy a style that you absolutely love. This gets you quickly out of the rut (or Comfort zone as art teachers call it ) and launches you into the direction of a new style. Then after two or three attempts at copying the style, you throw all reference out the window and begin to create on your own, using the techniques you learnt in your own work. Practice practice and a few paintings down you should have a distinctive style, influenced by......... in my case Monet.
I love Monet's earlier work. I think his work, at this stage, borders on the edge between realistic and Impressionism, not quite one or the other. So I picked one, and began to dab, trying to loosen that illustrative style that has become the comfort zone of so many artists.
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| Adding the people |
The one thing that was difficult to get around was the lack of attention to detail. Words I heard from Jackie Hinkson (who favours the Impressionist Cezanne) echoed in my head. He always stressed that you should forget the object's label/name. See the object in terms of shape and colours only. If you can pick apart the separate colours in their individual shapes that would help. Getting the eye and brain to "see" like that of course is always difficult.
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| Finished experiment |
Of course it in no way can stand next to Monet's original; but its a decent enough start.....and I need to transfer this technique to one of my own work. Lets see how this goes.
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