The Art of James Teeple

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Leicester, United Kingdom
I'm 21 / DMU Art Student / British-American.

Monday 27 May 2013

Masters Study - Gustave Courbet

For this masters study I was keen to research and discover a old artist that would be new to me and hopefuly by studying their work I could learn something new.
I decided I wanted to look into classical fantasy paintings or self portraiture. Ive always found self portraits interesting because its intriguing to study how the artist chooses how to capture themselves on the canvas.

Naturally I got online, began sourcing images and collating them in mood boards about each particular artist.

I discovered Courbet's work when searching for classical self portraiture. I really liked the contrast of light and shadow in his paintings. Something about the held a certain drama and mystery that others I found simply lacked. So I decided to study his work by emulating one of his painting with my own self portrait.

At first I was keen on doing the top right painting, but I tried to emulate his pose and found it very un natural. Too much exaggerated twisting of the neck in relationship to his shoulders which I found very uncomfortable. So in the end I settled on the bottom right one, which was an earlier self portrait I believe.
Im glad I chose this one because it had even more drama than the first and the pose was slightly more manageable though three times as complex!


I took a picture of myself and began in digital studying from it and Courbet's work to produce this:


As you can see I focused on gaining the values first the worked into detail. Lastly adding colour on a colour layer.
Final image- A self Portrait in the style of Gustave Courbet
I was quite pleased with the final Image, though I would have liked to give it more attention. Sadly I was out of time and needed to move on. As far as self portraits go for me, I think this is by far my best.

2 comments:

  1. Wow!! Your self portrait in the style of G. Courbet is amazing. I love it ;D

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  2. For I'm rendering the G. Courbet self portrait now I researched on the artist's style and encountered this post of yours. I must say that your version of this self-portrait is amazing. And it seems like that you resemble this. Yes, I'm truly fascinated by your work.

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