In your inspiration right this moment: 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 attention-grabbing mixture of realism and unfastened, painterly brushwork. Liljefors painted the topic (Anna) with positive 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 positive rendering additionally performs into the character of the topic, together with her hair carried out up, good clothes and accessories, and youthful and female qualities. The unfastened, impressionistic brushwork performs into the character of nature and its untamed and unrefined magnificence.
There’s a pleasing combine of soppy and onerous edges. The smooth edges ease the transition between the topic and the environment. The onerous 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 essential position. It provides 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 pink 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 beneath).
If we slim in on nature, just a few intricate leaves and flowers do many of the work. All the pieces else is reasonably easy and imprecise. Sir Arthur Streeton additionally did this fairly successfully in lots of his landscapes.
My solely criticism is that the topic seems to be a bit stiff and inflexible. Which may be as a result of pose or the topic’s clothes, however regardless, I feel a bit extra fluidity might go a good distance. (It’s essential to search for methods you may enhance or do in a different way when analyzing grasp work. This helps take the grasp artists down off a pedestal so we are able to see them for who they have been: artists similar to us.)
Thanks for studying! If you happen to ever need to study extra, begin with my Portray Academy course.
Dan Scott
Draw Paint Academy