The Art of Master Study Painting
Learning from a master study is one of the best ways to improve your painting skills! I have been putting it into practice, and I would like to share with you all how it has enriched my art journey. It's something that anyone can learn from, regardless of the skill level.
An art master study is recreating a painting from your chosen artist. You can recreate it exactly or use the same style and completely change the subjects. In my example below, I recreated the same artwork but added a twist. It's my approach to Claude Monet's painting, The Artist's Garden at Vetheuil. Whatever painting inspires you to pick up your brush, choose it! The purpose of recreating an old masters artwork or inspiration of one is to learn. You specifically explore how the artist arranged their composition, what inspired them, their color choices, style, mark-making, and more. You attempt to understand the process it took to paint the piece.
For my example, I chose the artist Claude Monet. He is one of my favorite artists, one reason being because of his love for landscape and nature (we share a similar subject vision). His inspiration came from his garden and the local landscapes around where he lived. He would include his wife and son as figures in addition to his landscapes. His focus was studying the shifting light and its effects. He captured all his paintings in plein air, outside in direct observation.
During the process of painting, The Artist's Garden at Vetheuil, I learned a few key elements. For starters, Monet used oils so his brush marks looked smoother and soft. I could not recreate much of that effect because I used acrylics. Acrylics dry fast, and I did not mix in any slow-dry medium to the paint.
Monet also used warm and cool greens (warm greens tend to have more yellow, and cooler greens have more blue). He used both to create dimension on the sunflower leaves and stems. In addition, he would add warm colors next to the green mix. It was small brush strokes of red next to the green strokes of the greenery. He continued the warm red-brown to the rooftop of the house in the background and pink to the clouds- tying the piece together as a whole. He balanced the vertical stairway and tall greenery with horizontal stokes on the house and cast shadows on the ground. You can watch the process of my master study with acrylic paint on cold-pressed watercolor paper on the Art Seeds Paintings YouTube Channel.
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