Title: Her Size: 60 cm. x 60 cm. Medium: Acrylic on Canvas Completion date: November 2021 Exhibition Text: The objective for this piece was to create a diptych style painting depicting femininity. Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus greatly inspired my painting. The diptych intentionally appropriate's Botticelli's work by reworking her original piece. The canvas of the painting was self made however acrylic paints were purchased. |
- Inspiration-
Botticelli, Sandro, The Birth of Venus, 1485.
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The Birth of Venus is a famous mythological painting created in 1485 by Sandro Botticelli. The goddess at the center of the painting, Venus, is seen coming out of the clam shell representing new beginnings, more specifically social, cultural and geological shifts as well as new civilizations. When looking at this painting through my own perspective, Venus represents femininity and those new beginnings. I wanted to separate her body and face in my diptych to represent the beauty and intricacy of the female body and the beauty of the face separately. Botticelli uses a warm but dull colors to create a earthy, natural atmosphere. In addition, her use of soft lines creates an angelic aspect to the women in her paintings.
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- Experimentation and Process -
I wanted to make my Venus be African American or of some ethnic background other then European. There are virtually no Renaissance paintings depicting women of color. A simple google search of "Renaissance paintings of women" (see right) will make the obvious. The Renaissance style depicts women with a soft, beautiful, almost angelic character to them. I wanted to paint a darker skinned women with this style. In addition, I nixed the eurocentric features for those typically found on an African American woman. In addition, I didn't want her to look like a model, I wanted her to look like a mother. I dd my best to paint her with this in mind.
The pictures I used as reference for the face side of the painting are to the left. It was important to me to not only use darker pigments but to also not paint the eurocentric features that we're taught.
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Diptych Aspect
Because a part of this project was the diptych aspect, I split my painting into two giving the left side to her body and the right side to her face. My reasoning behind this was to separate her body and face in order to represent the beauty and intricacy of the female body and the beauty of the face separately side by side. The human body but specifically that of a woman is a beautiful thing and represents new life and new opportunity. A woman's face is beautiful in a different aspect, as it represents beauty, desire and independence.
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Enlarged: Botticelli, Sandro, The Birth of Venus, 1485.
Since the background of the body side of the painting is green from the water behind Venus, and the face side has a blue background, I painted washes on my canvas respectively. This alone will help to ensure a separation between the paintings. In addition, it will help disallow bits of the white canvas peeking through. Doing this step improves the richness and cleanness of the art.
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Next, it was time to start to pencil on my figures. For the left painting (Venus' body) I initially attempted to sketch her in using the grid method. This was widely unsuccessful for me and the image came out extremely distorted. I repainted over the green/body side and started again but this time with a projector. Initially, she looked incredibly thin because the proportions of my painting were different from the proportions of the original The Birth Of Venus painting. Because her body looking real and frankly, average was so important to me, I resized the image (see below) to be wider before re-sketching it. After doing this, when I retraced her body, it looked a lot more realistic and proportionate.
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Grid method attempt
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The first thing I did after my wash was to start on Venus' body. I mixed different shades of brown and started working on highlights, shadows and her overall skin. Through this, I learned a lot about the way different amount of highlights and shadows can really affect the composition and look of her body.
The hair was a nice place to start given that it was something I felt experienced in already. I started with an orange background and then created texture and movement with different paint colors ranging from orange to orange-brown to brown.
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For the hair on the right painting I started with an orange base to sketch out where the hair was going to be. I mixed some orange and brown to make a darker shade for around her neck and around her roots. This allowed myself to create dimension without even adding in the smaller details. This is visible in the picture farthest to the left. The, using a smaller brush, i used a lighter shade of orange and a darker one to add highlights, shadows and further detail to her hair in order to create a more realistic look and emphasize the wavy texture of Venus' hair. This can be seen in the rightmost picture. I also included some strands of hair blowing from the right painting into the left one in order to create a more consecutive group of paintings. In addition, this allowed the body side of the painting a little bit of coverage.
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For the face I tackled the eyes, lips and eyebrows before anything else.
For the lips I just mixed red with black and worked on creating a full look with shadows For the eyes I tried to create dimension with shadows and bright white highlights. I shadowed the top of the eye to create a round shape. Finally, for the eyebrows, I used a darker orange shade and created brush like strokes. |
My initial attempt at her skin went less then perfect. I struggled with the acrylic paint drying faster then I could blend. The paints properties also disallowed for me to work in sections to a certain extent because it was impossible to color match and blend wet new paint into old, previously painted, dry paint. In addition
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In my second attempt for the face, I premixed all my colors and applied more paint at a time to minimize the patchiness and create a more even blend. This attempt was better but still a little uneven. In this step, I also gave her a neck and eyelashes to increase the realistic-ness of the face. I also darkened the eyebrows in this step which helped a lot.
In order to clean up the hair I attempted a new background but it came out looking cartoon-y and low quality. In addition, it was too dark in comparison to my inspiration. |
After my last painting session, I had a few things in mind that I knew I needed to fix. One of which was my lack of a horizon line I added this in and painted the sky a color similar to the one on the right painting, as they are both conceptually the same space. I made the color different enough though, that it wouldn't blend straight into the right-side painting. I intentionally made around her body the lightest blue in order to create contrast and emphasis.
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Next, after creating the sky, I made kind of a spontaneous decision to include the flowers seen in The Birth of Venus. I did this to add to the background due to the fact that the sky and water behind the figure are pretty plane. In this step, I also added trees on the edges of the painting to emphasize the horizon line and create a more recognizable split between the left and right painting.
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At this point, unfortunately after I had finished the flowers, I realized the little wave rippled I had painted in the water weren't recognizable and realistic. In addition, the green color was a little too vibrant for the composition and made the piece appear cartoon-ish, as the orange hair wasn't helping. I decided to paint over it with a suddle-er green and though painting around the flowers was hard, my inability to get super close to them unintentionally worked in my favor as it created a sort of shadow around the flowers.
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Before
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After
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- Critique -
Botticelli, Sandro, The Birth of Venus, 1485.
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Similarities:One of the many similarities in my piece and that of Botticelli was the content of the piece. As my painting is intentional appropriation of The Birth of Venus, you can see Botticelli's work present in mine.
Another similarity is the color pallet used in our pieces. I made sure to pay attention to the colors used in the original piece and then replicate those in mine. The final similarity is the opacity. Unless intentional, the majority of famous or well known paintings have incredibly rich paints that provide maximum opacity. Though the quality of my paints and the type of paints Botticelli and I used were different, I tried to mimic the richness opacity seen in his painting. Differences:A couple differences evident between the pieces are the level of detail and the number of people in the piece.
For starters, I only drew one person whereas the original piece had four. In addition, The original piece had a lot of detail in the flowers and water whereas my painting's detail mostly was found in the hair. Another difference was the type of paint used. The Birth of Venus is painted in tempera paint whereas I used acrylic paints. This could change the appearance of the paint and the way it preforms. |
- Reflection -
Overall, this piece pushed me to do things I'm not comfortable and experienced with. My go to is landscapes with oil paint and working with acrylic to create a body was something I found myself getting frustrated with. The paint would dry very fast, faster then I could blend and I needed to learn how to work with the material. I grew a lot in this aspect because by the end I felt a lot more comfortable with the medium. My inspiration for the project ended up connecting quite well due to the way I stressed using the same colors and brush strokes. This project reminded me of the block print project I did at the beginnings of the year because the thin lines in the hair were very tedious and it was similar technique to the carving of the block for our printing project. My favorite part of this piece was actually the flowers, something last minute. Nature is my favorite thing to play with in art and the flowers were a little piece of something I was comfortable with.
Act Questions:
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
The inspiration for this piece clearly effected my artwork given that the design included of an intentional appropriation of Botticelli's The Birth of Venus. I worked to incorporate aspects of my own ideals into the work of Botticelli to create a newer reconstructed piece. Through my research and investigation, I studied the style in which Botticelli painted and the way in which he applied paint to the canvas. I then tried to recreate these techniques in my work
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The creator of The Birth of Venus works to create a sense of rebirth and new beginnings in his piece.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
The style and strokes you utilize while painting can intentionally or unintentionally change the composition of a piece immensely.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
Botticelli's piece regarded change and conception however my piece revolved around the central theme of beauty both in face and body. The separation of these aspects on the canvas allowed them to become to different entities.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
The human body but specifically that of a woman is a beautiful thing and represents new life and new opportunity. A woman's face is beautiful in a different aspect, as it represents beauty, desire and independence.
The inspiration for this piece clearly effected my artwork given that the design included of an intentional appropriation of Botticelli's The Birth of Venus. I worked to incorporate aspects of my own ideals into the work of Botticelli to create a newer reconstructed piece. Through my research and investigation, I studied the style in which Botticelli painted and the way in which he applied paint to the canvas. I then tried to recreate these techniques in my work
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
The creator of The Birth of Venus works to create a sense of rebirth and new beginnings in his piece.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
The style and strokes you utilize while painting can intentionally or unintentionally change the composition of a piece immensely.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?
Botticelli's piece regarded change and conception however my piece revolved around the central theme of beauty both in face and body. The separation of these aspects on the canvas allowed them to become to different entities.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
The human body but specifically that of a woman is a beautiful thing and represents new life and new opportunity. A woman's face is beautiful in a different aspect, as it represents beauty, desire and independence.
Bibliography:
Botticelli, Sandro, The Birth of Venus, 1485.