Exhibition
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Souls is a painting depicting what the character of death sees. There are many descriptions of who death is, as a being that caused one's death by touching them. However I always preferred him as the entity that walks with you to the afterlife. I never liked the idea of him being a scary and evil being. This painting was inspired by “weeping willow” by Monet, “Body, La Granjilla, Cordoba front, Spain” and “Corpse of a Republican soldier, Navacerrada Pass, Segovia, Spain,” by Gerda Taro. |
Inspiration
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Souls was inspired by “Weeping Willow” by Claude Monet, and “Body, La Granjilla, Cordoba front, Spain” and “Corpse of a Republican soldier, Navacerrada Pass, Segovia, Spain,” by Gerda Taro. Inspiration was taken for color palette choices and plant meaning. The theme of death was also taken from all of the paintings. For Monet I took inspiration off of his warm tones throughout his painting. I knew that I wanted to take a similar color palette off of one of taro's pieces, so I wanted to have the bright contrast of the saturated warm tones of Monet's painting in my painting as well. I also took inspiration from his painting with his weeping willows. I know that Monet was heavily inspired by Japanese culture and their tradition. The weeping willow is associated with ghosts and it is popularly said that a ghost will appear where a willow grows. With that information I wanted to have some sort of flower that was associated with death in Japanese culture in my painting. After some research I came to the conclusion that I wanted to paint red spider lilies in my painting. I wanted these flowers because red spider lilies are associated with final goodbyes. According to legend, these flowers emerge where people part ways for life, and the flower is said to lead people through samsara, or the cycle of rebirth, in old Buddhist writings. Technique wise, I knew that I wanted to use thin lines like how Monet uses in his painting. I also wanted similar movement in my painting, where in Monet's painting shows movement vertically due to the vertical lines that make up his tree, and vertical movement with the lines that make up my cliff. During World War I, his younger son Michel served, and his friend and admirer Clemenceau led the French nation. Monet painted a series of weeping willow trees and water lilies as a way to honor the French fallen soldiers. Monet was acutely aware of the war, as the peace of his garden was sometimes shattered by the sound of gunfire from the battlefields only 50 kilometres away. I took Inspiration from Monet creating paintings to honor deaths from a war. While he was honoring war deaths, I painted my painting to honor the deaths of suicide victims. In 2018 alone, 48,344 people committed suicide, making that about 130 everyday. As well as with 1.4 million attempted suicide reports. And again that 1.4 million people, was just what was reported. My painting shows a young woman falling off a cliff, and her body is turning into a cloud like structure, which is meant to symbolize her soul. Throughout the painting one can see multiples of these clouds like things floating around the painting. While Monet painted weeping willows for his symbol of death, I painted those red spider lilies in my painting, kind of exploding out of her body. I also took inspiration from “Body, La Granjilla, Cordoba front, Spain” and “Corpse of a Republican soldier, Navacerrada Pass, Segovia, Spain,” by Gerda Taro. For “Body, La Granjilla, Cordoba front, Spain” I mainly just took inspiration from the rocks that are visible in taro's photograph. As well as of course the dead body. The rocks that are seen in her photograph is the main reason why I chose to create a painting with the setting of a cliff. In “Corpse of a Republican soldier, Navacerrada Pass, Segovia, Spain,” by Taro, I really only took inspiration from the tones in Toro’s photo. I knew that I didn't want to have a plain black and white painting, like in “Corpse of a Republican soldier, Navacerrada Pass, Segovia, Spain.” Though I did take inspiration from “Corpse of a Republican soldier, Navacerrada Pass, Segovia, Spain,” with the huge contrast between dark and light in her photo. |
Process / Experimentation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The first thing I did was come up with some sketches of what I was wanting to do. I knew that in my painting I wanted to have thin lines like Monet, some sort of symbol of death in my painting, I wanted rocks to be a future, and I wanted the color palette to be monotone except for a few streaks of Monet's bright warm tones. The first guess I came up with was a railroad track, with a character of death hovering next to it, and some red spider lilies growing around him.The second sketch came up with a cliff with some rocks breaking off of it, and again with death hovering over the edge. Originally I was also going to want to put my own weeping Willie in the painting, but decided against it. After I had those two sketches drawn up I ended up going with the sketch of a cliff. After I knew what I wanted to do, I came up with a larger scale sketch of the cliff. I decided that I wanted it to kind of look like an exit or entrance of a cave, on a cliff, and I also added the falling lady. so originally the clouds were just going to be clouds, but I came up with the idea of them being Souls later on in the painting process. |
Next I came up with my color palette, I also gave a brief description of how I made each color. Looking back on my color palette page I realized that it was a little more difficult to come up with color 5 then it was to remake any of my other colors. I kept adding too much black. but after I had each of my colors made I selected which ones I was going to be using in my final painting. I of course did do some variations of the colors by mixing some of them as I went so I didn't just have four colors on my painting. I did not want it that much monotone. I also went ahead and tried to look up what a red spider Lily looked like, and I tried to recreate the colors on that flower. it was actually very difficult to get the perfect shade, and even now I don't think I did it justice. I also tried to paint a large-scale of the red Spider Lily just to see if I could do it, because I know that painting flowers is not my forte. but I think I did at least a decent job, but it is a good thing that I did not need to paint a detailed red Spider Lily. and then went ahead and painted some smaller ones just so I knew what they would look like on my canvas. after that, I started on to sketching on my canvas.
process / Experimentation
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Before I did anything I admired the black canvas as it was. Personally I believe that black canvases are superior to the canvas just for their beauty, but I digress. After I was done fawning over the canvas, I went ahead and made a color similar to my shade 1 on my color palette page, but I made it a little bit lighter, by not using as much burnt sienna as I did in color 1. I did this because I wanted to be able to use the antique white color by itself later on in my painting as a highlight color, but if I made the background the same as my highlight color it would just get messy and blur together. After I was done making that shade, I used a rough bristle paint brush so that I could have a streaky background, to make it look like a bunch of tiny little lines, similar to Monet's very thin small lines. I used that brush a lot in my painting because I found it very tedious and hard to just use a tiny brush. I also didn't have a tiny enough brush to get the effect that I wanted most of the time, so I found this specific brush very helpful. But after I was done getting the background done I started on my sketch. At first I was drawing death too small in comparison to the falling girl, so I had to go back in and make him larger. I also changed the rotation of his head to look up. After I was done with all of the sketches I went in and started mixing way paints again and getting some painting done. The first thing I did was doing black painting, so that I could get a general sense of my highlights and shadows. After I was done with that I started in with a rough paint of my highlights on the edges of the cliff. The process of painting the cliff was by far the hardest part of this entire painting. I have painted mountains before, but they were much smaller and more in the distance, I also used a palette knife to paint those so this was a very different process and technique in that way. I started to notice that I was painting past my sketch so I had to put some tape down so that I wouldn't paint past my sketch line. When I was done painting closest to the edges of the cliff I was able to take the tape off and step back to see what I liked and didn't like. I had to step back a lot during this process and I had to keep tweaking little things, like my placement of highlights and shadows, and completely needing to get rid of a section in redo it. Another difficult part of painting the cliff was getting the angle of the highlights to be realistic, because the higher up the cliff I was going I needed it to go more horizontally then vertically. I also kept on accidentally blending in the cliff, so I had to keep letting it fully dry before I was able to get back into painting. I also was originally not going to use any plain white in my painting, but the more I kept looking back on it I kept thinking that the highlights weren't bright enough so I had to just go ahead and do it. and I'm glad I did because I really think that the contrast between the very light white, and the very dark black helped with making it look similar to my inspiration pieces. When I was done painting the left edges, I went in and started painting the actual cliff/cave portion of the painting. The first thing I did was the Shadows closest to the inside of the cliff, as well as the shadows made from the rocks. I also have to go back in and do the shadows for the floating staff and Death. I then went ahead and painted my rocks that are on top of my clif. This was also pretty difficult because I have never really had any experience painting rocks before, and I kept wanting to make them look realistic, but I had to keep in mind Monet's style of painting. |
After the entire cliff was done painted, I went in and started painting Death himself. it was difficult to paint him in the style that Monet painted, with the thin lines, because I could only really make those thin lines in his highlights. as well as his staff, was difficult to paint in that style. I've had to go and paint the falling lady. She was also difficult to paint in thin lines. Both the falling lady and death are pretty blocky in comparison to the rest of the painting. I think this is because I've never really painted a person in the style, so I should have tried to practice that on something other than my canvas before I started painting. But after I was done painting her, I went ahead and painted the red spider lilies around her. Then I went in and started painting the souls. Again these were originally just going to be some clouds, but I changed my mind and like the idea of them being Souls, I also wanted to put some of the red tones in there. But first I used that thick stringy brush again to get a base layer of the souls, and then I went in with my highlights and shadows with my thin brush. He wanted the ladies soul to be the most red and vibrant, because it was the newest to appear in this world that I created. I wanted the older souls to be the darkest in the newest to be the smallest and brightest.
Reflection
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Overall as a painting, I love how it turned out. I wasn't quite sure in the beginning if I'd be able to use the techniques that Monet used, but I think I did him justice. I also really think I got the color palette pretty similar to the photo that Taro took. though if I were to do this painting again I would practice painting people in desk Style a little bit more. I would also probably practice painting the souls. Because of the fact that I decided to make them Souls instead of clouds light in the painting, I didn't really get to experiment with it all that much. But I do still like how this painting turned out, and I am really happy with it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Overall as a painting, I love how it turned out. I wasn't quite sure in the beginning if I'd be able to use the techniques that Monet used, but I think I did him justice. I also really think I got the color palette pretty similar to the photo that Taro took. though if I were to do this painting again I would practice painting people in desk Style a little bit more. I would also probably practice painting the souls. Because of the fact that I decided to make them Souls instead of clouds light in the painting, I didn't really get to experiment with it all that much. But I do still like how this painting turned out, and I am really happy with it.
Similarities and Differences
similarities-
- has warm tones - thin lines - vertical movement - death symbols differences- - while monet implies death in the meaning of the weeping willow, my painting also shows death, both as a person and and reality. |
Similarities and Differences
similarities-
- shows death - contrast between lights and shadows - has rocks as a main element in the art differences- -Taros photo here has no color other than blac, white, and shades between, where as mine relies on the color to have the contrast between the monotone parts of the painting, and the warmer tones |
Similarities and Differences
similarities-
- orange ish brown tones, with a lot of grey - shows death differences- -Taros photo is really monotone, where as mine is only monotone in very specific parts of my painting. |
https://www.paintingmania.com/weeping-willow-4-7_4193.html
https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/body-la-granjuela-cordoba-front-spain
https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/corpse-of-a-republican-soldier-navacerrada-pass-segovia-spain
https://www.aftermath.com/content/us-suicide-statistics/
https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/body-la-granjuela-cordoba-front-spain
https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/objects/corpse-of-a-republican-soldier-navacerrada-pass-segovia-spain
https://www.aftermath.com/content/us-suicide-statistics/