Hey guys! This past week in my Painting class we were working on studying a piece by David Park, called “Standing Couple”. I decided to take this as a chance to study my color making. The original piece was very colorful, and repeated colors throughout the canvas, which is something to say considering it was originally a 57″ x 75″ artwork.
Standing Couple by David Park, photo from Krannert Art Museum website
To recreate the art, I started out by having to resize it. I used a calculator to resize it to the size canvas I had, which was 12×16. There was some difference in size, so I used masking tape on the edges to mark off the excess canvas, which doubled as a border to my own piece.
Following that, it was a practice of mixing colors, and lots of trial and error. The original was very figurative yet had impressions of a gestural type painting. That meant that it had a lot of movement in it. David Park achieved that by using the colors that he made and making them jump around the canvas. Some teal would appear on the bottom, but it could also appear on the figure. Interestingly, while both of the figures were a bit more desaturated, there were parts that were much more bright and colorful, showing that the sun was hitting them directly.
The difference between my and David Parker paintings, besides he being the master and original creator, was that I used acrylic while the original was painted with oil paints. This created for some more interesting learning on my part, in trying to match the colors of the acrylic to a different type of paint, all the while thinking of how the paint would look dry.
Standing Couple copy, by Georisell
Over all, I think this was a very good experience, and I’d love to try out copying more master works to try and learn from them. If you put a nice layer of gesso in a page in your sketchbook, you can go on a head and do the same! Or even try it on your own canvas!
What do you guys think of my copy? Have you guys ever tried to learn from a master work before? What were the results? Let me know in the comments if you have your own stories, or just want to give me some tips on what I could work on next! Until next time, keep on creating!
Images and information provided by Krannert Art Museum in the University of Illinois
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