Something different with more or less the same approach. I love Van Gogh's iris paintings, a lot more than I love his sunflowers. The colors in those feel almost dirty at times where the irises seem to glow. I was lucky enough to see one of the originals at the Getty a couple years ago with my sister. Looking at some online, I decided to try some myself, though I had no real ones, just image search results. That being said, I think these are three different species, types or whatever. Wish I had real ones but it's the wrong time of year and there's this plague. Sketched in pencil first, most of which is a contour sketch (meaning I don't look at the paper much at all), I then just snapped a photo from within Procreate and went from there. Originally was not going to have outlines but the strokes of paint didn't convey what I wanted. I did a layer of outlines, wasn't convinced and set it aside. Tonight, I went back, deciding to ink the lines like normal. Also decided to add texture to the background. Ten minutes later I was satisfied. I think it came out reasonably well. I could see doing more of this.
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I’m finishing up “Bright Earth” by Philip Ball. The book is all about the chemistry and technique of color in painting. During Vincent Van Gogh’s time a lot of new chemicals and colors were coming available, and they hadn’t been well tested and were subject to unintended chemical interactions with other colors/chemicals, or even oxidation. It was fascinating to learn the renaissance painters ended up being alchemist/chemists in their own right. They new some colors need a barrier of varnish between them as to not interact. Fascinating book that I was extremely engaged by.
So my point was it is believed the sunflowers were rather bright as opposed to muddy.
Well hello there! Making paint has always been a chore, so it seems, not only for colors but, like you say, reactions with other paints, the surface, time, light, moisture, tons of things. By the time of the Impressionists, there was paint in tubes. Before that, you had to make your own, sometimes to disastrous results. We're lucky with Van Gogh; he tended to write extensively about what his paintings were supposed to look like. I'm sure the book you mention talks about the Dutch masters painting mostly in black and white then just glazing thin, diluted layers of color over this as the pigments were so damned expensive. Da Vinci used to experiment a lot which is why "The Last Supper" looks so terrible; it was a brand new way of painting/applying the fresco and, as it turned out, was highly unstable. You're totally right; each painter had his or her own recipes and would have to grind things like oak galls, lapis lazuli and, sometimes, toxic agents to make colors. Some of Van Gogh's paintings have apparently drastically changed colors over the years to the point that restorers have to choose between stabilizing the painting's colors and trying to make the painting look the way it did when Van Gogh painted it. They mostly choose the former. Thanks for writing in! I'll look up that book!
I think as good as Procreate is, a large part of why these images you've been making look so natural is just you. I really can't tell if you have made a painting on canvas or whatever, or if it's done digitally anymore.
Thanks, Vince! I think a lot of it has to do with the quality of the brushes and how they react. That one inking brush I use all the time is just THE thing. It was part of a group I bought and it's worth the price of the whole group. I try really hard to make marks look as organic as possible, even once they've been put through Super Vectorizer. Each color is done in a different shade of gray, brought over to the mac and then reassigned in AD. I think I could easily do silkscreens this way. Don't know that I want to bother.
If I had the ability to silkscreen, I would 100% make my own t-shirts. Happy houseboat t-shirts! I cna't imagine trying to learn how to do that, I did try when I was young and I don't remember producing anyhting. My friend Toby did some of it but I don't remember anything he did either!
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