Overview:
Title: My City Size: 45.5 cm x 35.5 cm Medium: Acrylic Paint Date of completion: August 2023 Exhibition text: My City is an acrylic painting that was inspired by Vincent Van Gogh and Camille Pissarro. It represents the city that I have called home my whole life and the things I love most about it. The way that I represented my city is the iconic skyline and the beautiful sunsets I see. Overall, this connects back to the themes of lifesyle and identity that I have explored in the past. |
Inspiration
Starry Night is a painting that was created by Vincent Van Gogh in 1889. Van Gogh created this piece during the impressionist movement and this can be seen in the characteristics of the piece. This is what I am inspired by for my piece. Since I am doing a senset in my piece I want to try to incorporate some of these techniques in my painting. I was also inspired by the color pallette that Van Gogh used for his painting.
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The Boulevard Montmartre at Night is a painting created by Camille Pissarro in 1897. This painting was also created in the midst of the impressionist movement. I see this piece as a mix between impressionism and realism. I am going to be creating buildings in my piece so I think that this painting could be a good inspiration for me. The soft and plain colors of the buildings is something I intend on including in my piece to contrast with the colors of the sunset. The ability that Pissarro had to create the small details and line work is also something that I strive to include in my painting also.
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Planning
The image on the right is my planning sketch for this project. I identified what my theme is and how I will execute the theme through the painting. The theme that I am exploring in this piece is life and identity. More specifically for this piece it would be things associated with my personal life. I plan on executing this by including he skyline of the city I have lived in my whole life, Milwaukee. I will also have the sunset which is something I enjoy seeing. The sketch is just a rough sketch that outlines where the certain elements will be placed.
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This section of planning is the color swatched I will be using for the sky part of the painting. I mixed blue with white and blue with black for the shades of blue. I also made a purple shade and a bright orange for the sunset. I also used yellow with a hint of blue for the blending of the elements.
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Lastly, this section of the planning phase is testing out different brushes. With the colors that I already had made, I tested out nine different brushes, ranging from round to squared brushes. This helped me to determine what brushes would be good for each element. Some sections of the painting would need very tiny brushes, such as the outlining and the windows. Other sections, like the sky and plain buildings, would need the larger brushes.
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Process
The first step in my process was to sketch out where each of the buildings would go. I started by using a mechanical pencil to outline the shapes. SInce I was freehanding most of the buildings it took a lot of trial and error. I had to erase multiple elements a few times until I felt that it was perfect. Some of the ghost marks are visible in the picture. Once I felt that the outlines were sufficient, I made the lines more permanent by using a fine brush and black acrylic paint. This step took a lot of patience and a steady hand. I then began to start working on the elements of the large building on the left. This building is easily recognizable as the US Bank building in Downtown Milwaukee. I used the same fine brush to fill in the triangle shapes and the rectangle on top.
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The next step was to fill in the windows of the two larger buildings of this painting. The building on the left has small square windows. I painted this using the same fine marker and the black acrylic paint. I added a decent layer of paint to the windows to make them pop against the base color of the painting. The building on the right has long black stripes which was created using a flat square brush. These strokes were easier to execute than the building on the left because they required lest turning of the board and brush. Still it did require me to clean up some edges where I went over the lines. It was important to me that the lines were as clean as tehy could be.
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The final step of working on the buildings was to shade them in. I mixed together three different shades of gray to create a contrast between the buildings. i wanted to make all of the buildings a darker gray to give the allusion that it was night time since I am going to be creating a sunset in the background. I used a larger flat brush to fill in the solid gray buildings and the a smaller flat brush for the buildings that have more details to them. The brush choice in this part of the painting is essential to making sure that the lines remain clean and even. I did have to use the fine brush again to go over the black outlines in the areas where the gray went over too far.
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Next I began to work on the sky of the painting. As stated earlier, I wanted to create a sunset in this piece since I love looking at the sunsets from my house. I started at the top of the board with a dark blue color and then blended that lower with a lighter blue. I then blended the lighter blue with the purple shade that I had created. The orange shade I created blended at the top of the skyline and blended into the purple shade. I then used a fan brush to make the swirls in the sky and to make the yellow circles.
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I did not like how i ended the sky in the image of above so I started over again. Since the paint was still wet I blended out the shades and started the swirls and brustrokes over again. I used the same technique as stated above just with a different brush and I lightened the shades of the colors. I was happy how it ended up turning out, and I believe the inspiration piece from Van Gogh benefitted me more once I started over with the brushstrokes.
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Experimentation
Similarly to other projects I have done, the experimentation for this projects comes into the color swatches. In order to make my shades i mixed the colors on a paper plate. The main colors I focused on are the colors that were used for the sunset. These include the blue shades, the purple, and the orange, all of which can be seen in the painting. I needed to make sure that the range of colors was good enough to blend together while also standing out.
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Critique
There a couple of similarities between my painting and the paintings that I used as my inspirations. Most of the similarites come from the painting that was created by Vincent Van Gogh. The most notable similarity is that they are both paintings. However mine is done in arylic paint, while Starry Night was created with oil on canvas. The piece by Pissarro is also a painting. My piece and Van Gogh's is similar in the fact that they both portray a night time scene. I took influence from the brushstrokes and the yellow and white circles that are in the painting. I definitely needed to include these in my piece especially to have those similarities. I wanted to have a nighttime scene in mine because it the sunsets are one of my most favorite things to see, so I wanted to portray my interests into this piece. With Van Gogh, he portrays what he is seeing in real life but adds the impressionist twist onto it. One of the most notable differences is that the brushstrokes in Van Gogh's piece are way more emphasized and visable, whereas in mine the brushstrokes are not as visisble. There is a reason for me doing this. Instead of steering into the impressionist realm, I wanted to capture some essence of realism. I wanted to have a combination of both art movements and this came through limiting the emphasis on the brushstrokes as much as Van Gogh has.
Reflection
The process of creating this painting was kind of stressful for me. The overall time management of this piece is waht I struggled with. It took longer to create that I thought it originally would. Also I realized that I have an extreme lack of patience when it came to the steady hands and small lines. However, I did enjoy making this piece because it is so personal to me. Also the piece I chose as my inspiration is one of my favorite pieces of all time so I was very happy to use it as one of my inspirations. Painting is something that I have done for a while and enjoy doing. Each time i paint though I feel like I am able to develop new skills. This time around I was able to develop the skills of recreating things with my own twist and making the main building as close to the original as possible. I did have a lot of fun making this piece and would do it all over again. The only thing I would change is giving myself more time and not rushing myself.
ACT Questions
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
- I am able to identify a cause and effect relationship from the Van Gogh piece in particular because there are elements that I have carried over to my piece while also making it my own. The art movement of the two inspirations were also carried over with the specific identifying characteristics.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
- The overall approach the author has is capturing what is seen in the moment and capturing the reality. Both inspiration pieces are real things that are being painting with a slight twist and changing incluences.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
- The conclusion that I drew relates to the impressionist movement. I would assume that the movement captures the realism while adding the characteristics of the impressionist movement which alters the reality to a slight.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
- The central theme around my research is my own personal life and creating things that are personal to me.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
- As stated earlier the influence I made is that the impressionist movement is an altered reality.
- I am able to identify a cause and effect relationship from the Van Gogh piece in particular because there are elements that I have carried over to my piece while also making it my own. The art movement of the two inspirations were also carried over with the specific identifying characteristics.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
- The overall approach the author has is capturing what is seen in the moment and capturing the reality. Both inspiration pieces are real things that are being painting with a slight twist and changing incluences.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
- The conclusion that I drew relates to the impressionist movement. I would assume that the movement captures the realism while adding the characteristics of the impressionist movement which alters the reality to a slight.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
- The central theme around my research is my own personal life and creating things that are personal to me.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
- As stated earlier the influence I made is that the impressionist movement is an altered reality.
MLA Citations
French, Camille Pissarro. “Camille Pissarro: The Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning.” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1 Jan. 1897, www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437310.
You Are Being Redirected..., www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/starry-night.html. Accessed 30 Aug. 2023.
You Are Being Redirected..., www.vangoghgallery.com/painting/starry-night.html. Accessed 30 Aug. 2023.