While Vincent Van Gogh is most well known for his oil paintings, he actually did use watercolours to paint field studies, to practice, or to paint drafts for larger oil paintings. His watercolour paintings started out quick, mainly to get an idea onto paper or to add colour to his sketches and drawings. As he became more comfortable with the medium, he created more complex paintings and his signature style of bright colours and crisp brushwork began to show.
In a letter to his brother in 1888, Gogh said,
This inspired me because he recognized that he was dissatisfied with some of his art at this time, yet still held an understanding that the medium was new to him, and the skills and satisfaction will come little by little. Van Gogh is an artist that I really admire because of his introspection and ability to share true emotion and story through his art. His art is some that truly moves me.
For my painting this week, I decided to draft a painting using watercolours. I have very little experience painting portraits, so for this painting I chose to paint a self portrait! Though not in watercolour, pictured here is one of Van Gogh’s famous self portraits. Gogh painted self portraits because he wanted to practice painting people. And, he actually painted himself from memory – not by using a mirror! His self portraits are intimate, and telling of his story and his life.
I kept in mind while painting, that this is simply meant to be a draft for a bigger project. I wasn’t quite satisfied with my final painting. I don’t think it’s bad – it just doesn’t look like me!
I started by sketching a self portrait, although I did use a mirror because I don’t yet have a good “feel” for my face like Van Gogh did. Once I finished my sketch, I moved on to painting with the watercolours.
I would like to continue to work on realism and portraits especially, as that’s not something I’ve completely delved into before. I am happy with the shadows and highlights, but it was SO difficult to recreate the precision that I had with the pencil when doing my sketch. I also found it really hard to get the proportions right on my painting. You can really see this in the facial features – the eyes, nose, lips, and eyebrows just look “off”. I will say that it can be a strange feeling to criticize a painting of myself. When looking in the mirror, I got slightly frustrated because some of my features didn’t seem… easy to paint? It was hard not to be self deprecating especially when I found myself unhappy with the final product. I definitely tried to have Gogh’s quote to his brother in the back of my mind – although I may be dissatisfied with my work right now, progress will come little by little.
Key ideas:
- Creating realistic proportions
- Using a reference
- Shading
- Precision
- Painting facial features
- Colour matching to reference
- Mixing colours
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