A Portrait of Gaudi – 9 x 12 inch acrylic painting on heavyweight mixed media paper
With this painting, I combined two online class lessons. For my Studying Under the Masters class, we learned about Antoni Gaudi, artist and architect from Spain. When we were in Barcelona, five years ago, we saw many of his creations…my favorites being Park Guell and Casa Battlo. He had a fondness for curved lines and mosaics…and these make his buildings quite memorable. For my other online class, we are learning about painting values…the lights and darks of a painting, the shadows and highlights. We were encouraged to paint with a limited palette for this exercise. I chose to paint the very handsome, Gaudi. He is the fifth artist of the past, that I have painted in the last year…they have all been men, and they have all had beards…believe it or not. But this is the first one painted, using only Carbon Black and Titanium White paint. There is a challenge to this, especially since I have been immersed in Matisse-like color for the last month. But I certainly learned a lot from this exercise!
Here is a progression of this painting…
He went through quite a transformation, which is why I love taking progression photos while I am painting. It helps me to persist through the “not so pretty” stages of a painting, to persevere to the end result.
By the way, I think I AM getting better at painting beards!
