On your inspiration at present: Anna by Swedish painter Bruno Liljefors.
(Click on right here to obtain a high-resolution picture of the portray.)
What I like most about this portray is the fascinating mixture of realism and unfastened, painterly brushwork. Liljefors painted the topic (Anna) with high-quality rendering and readability while the remainder of the portray is extra relaxed and impressionistic. There’s no mistaking what the focus is and the place Liljefors needs us to look.
The high-quality rendering additionally performs into the character of the topic, together with her hair achieved up, good clothes and niknaks, and youthful and female qualities. The unfastened, impressionistic brushwork performs into the character of nature and its untamed and unrefined magnificence.
There’s a nice combine of sentimental and arduous edges. The mushy edges ease the transition between the topic and the environment. The arduous edges add readability and draw our consideration in direction of the focus. They’re like exclamation factors within the portray.
The hat on the bottom performs an vital function. It offers our eyes one thing else to bounce between. The place of it helps draw our consideration into the portray. There’s a delicate coloration hyperlink between the purple accents on the hat and the topic’s lips. And it’s additionally a part of a unfastened zig-zag movement that takes our eyes on a journey to the focus (see the picture under).
If we slim in on nature, a number of intricate leaves and flowers do many of the work. All the pieces else is relatively easy and imprecise. Sir Arthur Streeton additionally did this fairly successfully in lots of his landscapes.
My solely criticism is that the topic appears to be like a bit stiff and inflexible. That could be as a result of pose or the topic’s clothes, however regardless, I feel a bit extra fluidity may go a great distance. (It’s vital to search for methods you would possibly enhance or do otherwise when analyzing grasp work. This helps take the grasp artists down off a pedestal so we will see them for who they had been: artists identical to us.)
Thanks for studying! In case you ever wish to study extra, begin with my Portray Academy course.
Dan Scott
Draw Paint Academy