ACRYLIC PAINTING
Overview
Title: Childlike Joy
Size: 60.96 cm x 91.44 cm Medium: Acrylic Paint on Stretched Canvas Date: November 2023 Exhibition Text
"Childlike Joy" is an acrylic painting meant to convey the positive emotions and memories I associate with my childhood. As I become older, I am still able to look back and think fondly of my childhood. I demonstrate this theme by including aspects of my childhood such as flowers and my white bear hat, as well as colors associated with innocence and joy such as pink, yellow, and white. This painting focuses on the use of expression in a portrait and is inspired by the work of Pierre-Auguste Renoir. |
INSPIRATIONS
I also found inspiration in Renoir's pieces "Madame Henriot", "In Summer", and "Portrait of Aline Charigot". All of these pieces once again had women as the main focus of the piece, with a colorful and lively background. In his pieces "Madame Henriot" and "Portrait of Aline Charigot" Renoir uses very light colors such as pastel yellows, blues, and greens. This is a similar color palette to what I wanted to use in my own piece in order to express my theme of childhood. A piece I was also inspired by from his collection that has some contrasting features to the rest of his works is his piece "In Summer". Rather than using very light pastel colors and having a plain colored background, Renoir chose to include greenery in the background of this piece with interesting brushstrokes. I thought this piece was an interesting contrast to some of his other pieces because the overall appearance of this painting is more dark and uses darker colors than many of his other paintings. From his work I really found inspiration in his way of illustrating femininity and his use of color.
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The artist I was inspired by when creating this piece was Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Renoir was a French Impressionist painter who was primarily known for his work with feminine portraits. I was really drawn to Renoir's technique in his work, specifically the way that he uses color in his pieces and the way that he painted expressions. Many of the pieces that I was inspired by included light pastel colors which is the color palette I wanted to use in my own painting.
One of his pieces that I found the greatest inspiration in was "Portrait of the Actess Jeanne Samary", which was a portrait of a woman with an expressive face and a vibrant pink background. I was really drawn to this piece due to the expression shown on the woman's face. The way that Renoir used a variety of different colors to bring vibrancy and life to her face was very visually appealing. |
PLANNING
On my next page, I sketched out my chosen composition with two different colored backgrounds. I knew that I wanted a soft background like Renoir used, but I wasn't sure which color would be able to best replicate that same aesthetic. I decided that the pink color would look better since it was lighter, softer, and had more associations with childhood and innocence than the color blue. I also practiced with how I was going to use the different shades of pink to create a soft look. The softer color was also more similar to the shades that Renoir used in the background of many of his feminine portraits.
After I had the basic composition of the piece planned, I wanted to practice my technique on the hat a little bit more. I wanted to continue practicing how to create movement using paint and brushstrokes. I wanted the hat to look like it would be naturally sitting on my head, and I wanted to make sure it didn't look stiff and out of place. I also laid out the general composition of the piece on the canvas. I determined how much space each part should take up and which aspects should draw the most attention. |
When beginning to plan my piece, I first wanted to write down my theme and my inspiration so that I could refer back to them when creating my sketches. I determined that I wanted the theme of my piece to be childhood, specifically my childhood. I started out sketching two different concepts for the main formal qualities of my piece. In one version I had my hair down, and in the other I had my hair braided. The one consistent throughout both versions though was that I included a bear hat. This bear hat was a consistent aspect of my childhood, so I found it important to include in my piece given the theme. After these sketches, I determined that I liked the first one more because I didn't think that I would be able to properly execute the look of the braids through painting. Once I figured out how I wanted myself to look in the painting, I wanted to individually practice the details of the hat because it was such an important part of the piece. I practiced the angle and movement of the hat, wanting it to look like it was naturally sitting on my head rather than just being placed facing forward at an awkward angle. In addition, I practiced the detailed stitching of the hat because in this piece I wanted to challenge myself to increase the amount of details that I was including in my paintings. |
PROCESS
Moving on from the hat I began to paint my skin. At first I was struggling with this part because the shades that I was mixing kept turning out more grey and cold than the warmth that I was aiming to show through my skin. Eventually however, I was able to mix a color that was more brown than grey and used that for my shading which drastically improved the overall look of the face. I also began to work on my eyes at this part of the process. Since the theme of my piece was about childhood joy, I wanted to make sure that I was showing this joy and happiness in my piece though my eyes squinting in a smile and showing myself with a full teeth smile. In addition, I wanted to replicate the way that Renoir was able to create expressions in his paintings.
Once I was happy with how all of the skin in my piece looked I began to work on my shirt. I chose a light yellow color for my shirt because it's a color associated with innocence and joy which are both things that I associate with my own childhood. I used a lighter yellow for the base and then went in with a slightly darker yellow in order to add folds and shading to the shirt. After completing the base of the shirt I used a smaller brush to paint flowers all over the shirt. I chose to make these flowers soft greens, blues, pinks, and white which are all colors either associated with joy or innocence. Around this time I also added more details to my hat, using very small brushstrokes and lines to add texture to the hat. After some consideration I actually ended up completely redoing my hair because I was very unhappy with how it looked. I repainted dark brown over all of my hair and then went back in with the same yellow and pink to reshape it again. Once I got the shape of my hair complete I changed the way I approached adding other colors and highlights in my hair. Rather than just adding random colors and highlights without intention, I made purposeful highlights and used a photo of my hair for reference. This process finally gave me the outcome I was looking for, and I was able to move on and add other finishing touches to my piece. |
To start the process of my painting, I first projected and sketched my reference picture onto my canvas. It was important for me to project because there were a lot of key details in this painting that I needed to be proportionally accurate such as my teeth and the size of my hat compared to my head. Once everything was sketched out, I began by painting the background. I used a light pink for the background because it's a color that I associate with my childhood and innocence. I used a combination of many different shades of pink to create a similar effect to Renoir's backgrounds in his paintings. I used water at some points in order to better blend together the different shades of pink in order to make a soft background.
Once the background was done I began to paint the bear hat. I used different variations of white and grey and made sure I was creating lines in the hat accurate to how the crochet stitching looked on the actual hat. I didn't include all of the details at first because I wanted to just get down the basic forms included in the hat. After finishing the shirt, I started the most difficult part of this process for me which ended up being the hair. One of my biggest weaknesses in art has always been my ability to paint hair, so in this painting I wanted to improve this skill and paint an accurate interpretation of my hair that I was happy with.
I started off painting the hair by creating a brown base for the basic shape and color of the hair. Once I had this base down I began to add more details and shape to the hair in an attempt to make the form look more natural and realistic. After doing this I realized that I ended up making my hair too large and awkwardly shaped. To fix this I went back in with the same yellow and pink used in the background and shirt and tried to reshape the hair. This worked and made the hair look a lot better. I also added lighter and darker shades of brown to the hair to add dimension to it. However after doing this my hair still looked too flat. |
EXPERIMENTATION
I also had to use varying brushstrokes to paint other sections of piece such as the lips and hair. For the lips of the painting, I used short small brushstrokes in order to accurately paint the creases of my lips. While painting the hair, I used a lot of different brush sizes and brushstrokes. I wanted to make my hair seem like it was laying naturally on my chest, so I had to experiment with how to use brushstrokes to achieve this.
Another form of experimentation I used in this piece involved the use of color. I wanted to create a warm, vibrant, and lively atmosphere in this painting, all adjectives I'd use to describe my childhood. In order to create this atmosphere I had to experiment with the types of colors I was using in my painting. This experimentation happened primarily with the shirt and background of the piece. With the shirt I wanted to mix a warm shade of yellow, and for the background I wanted to mix a warm and light shade of pink. I had to experiment with mixing different shades in order to get the ideal warm colors. |
A large majority of the experimentation I did throughout this piece involved types of brushstrokes and methods of paintings. Since Renoir and I used different mediums to create our pieces, it was difficult for me to try and replicate the way he used brushstrokes in his work. This piece was also the most detailed and realistic piece I've made, which required a wider variety of brush size variations than I'm used to working with. I had to use a range of different brush sizes for different parts of my painting. For the background I originally started with using a large brush and creating wide brushstrokes, but started to realize that it may be beneficial for me to use a smaller brush in order to achieve brushstrokes closer to Renoir's. Once making this switch, I noticed a large difference in the overall look of my piece and I was a lot happier with it. In addition, for my bear hat I had to use a very small brush. It was important for me to get this hat as accurate as possible, and so I had to experiment with the way I was painting the lines in order to get them to look like crochet. |
CRITIQUE
There are a lot of similarities between my piece and Pierre-Auguste Renoir's piece "Portrait of the Actess Jeanne Samary". For starters, we both painted feminine portraits and each painting displays the formal component of a woman being the main focus of the piece. In addition, both of the women featured in the pieces more expressive faces, my piece displaying myself with a wide smile and Renoir's featuring the woman with a slight smirk on her face. In addition, the backgrounds of our pieces are very similar as well. Not only did we use the same color to create the background, but we used a similar technique of blending together multiple shades of colors to create movement through the background. Another similarity between my piece "Childlike Joy" and my inspiration is the warm colors used throughout both of our pieces. We both choose to use relatively warm colors in our pieces, with the exception of a few shades of blue in Renoir's piece. This use of warm colors creates a vibrant and lively atmosphere in our paintings.
There are also some differences between my painting and my inspiration. The most significant difference is the differing mediums we used to complete our paintings. I used acrylic paint while Renoir used oil. This difference in mediums impacted the process we both completed to make our painting, as well as changing our overall results. In Renoir's piece, the paint looks much more smudged and you can visibly see the individual brushstrokes that he used as an Impressionist painter. However since I used acrylic paint, I wasn't able to achieve the same visual effect as Renoir was through his medium.
There are also some differences between my painting and my inspiration. The most significant difference is the differing mediums we used to complete our paintings. I used acrylic paint while Renoir used oil. This difference in mediums impacted the process we both completed to make our painting, as well as changing our overall results. In Renoir's piece, the paint looks much more smudged and you can visibly see the individual brushstrokes that he used as an Impressionist painter. However since I used acrylic paint, I wasn't able to achieve the same visual effect as Renoir was through his medium.
REFLECTION
Overall, I am incredibly happy with the outcome of this piece. This painting was the most long-term painting I've ever worked on, and it really pushed my boundaries as an artist. Through this painting I was pushed to work on the same project for a long period of time without losing motivation. During the process of creating this piece I was also pushed to refine my skills with acrylic paint itself. I've never created a painting with this amount of detail in it before, and I was challenged to include very small details in this piece and accurately depict them using my chosen medium. While creating this painting, I also had to keep my connection to Renoir's work in mind. The inspiration I found in his work can be particularly seen in the background of my piece. The biggest challenge I encountered while creating this piece was staying motivated to include all of the small details I wanted to include and not give up and make it more simple than I desired. My favorite part of this process was painting my bear hat. This hat is something that held a lot of significance to me in my childhood, and it was important to me to not only create a piece representing this joy I associate with this hat but also show my hat in an accurate way. I hope others are able to look at my piece "Childlike Joy" and consider the emotions they associate with their childhood.
ACT QUESTIONS
1. Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
You are able to visually see the connection between my piece and my inspiration. We both used similar warm color pallets to create vibrancy in our paintings.
2. What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
How technique, color, and expression can work together in a piece to create a specific mood or atmosphere
3. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I have discovered that certain colors are associated with certain subjects such as mood.
4. What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
How Renoir used color to create feminine portraits that display a variety of different women with different expressions.
5. What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
The use of warm colors are meant to create a vibrant atmosphere in Renoir's paintings.
You are able to visually see the connection between my piece and my inspiration. We both used similar warm color pallets to create vibrancy in our paintings.
2. What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
How technique, color, and expression can work together in a piece to create a specific mood or atmosphere
3. What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
I have discovered that certain colors are associated with certain subjects such as mood.
4. What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
How Renoir used color to create feminine portraits that display a variety of different women with different expressions.
5. What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
The use of warm colors are meant to create a vibrant atmosphere in Renoir's paintings.
CITATIONS (MLA)
“Pierre-Auguste Renoir.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., 29 Sept. 2023, www.britannica.com/biography/Pierre-Auguste-Renoir.
"In Summer" by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.” Joy of Museums Virtual Tours, 8 Apr. 2020, joyofmuseums.com/museums/europe/germany-museums/berlin-museums/national-gallery-berlin/summer-pierre-auguste-renoir/.
"In Summer" by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.” Joy of Museums Virtual Tours, 8 Apr. 2020, joyofmuseums.com/museums/europe/germany-museums/berlin-museums/national-gallery-berlin/summer-pierre-auguste-renoir/.