I managed to finish my 3 lookalikes for my son's wedding. Here they are:
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| 'Senecio' after Klee's painting |
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| still life after Cézanne |
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oil sketch after Cézanne
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Still to come: Miró's ' People and a dog before the sun' which is nearly finished.
Here are a couple of details:
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| detail of my version |
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| detail of my version |
The problem with Miró is
1. He liked painting on rough surfaces.
I think I went over the top with sand mixed into my underpainting and made life difficult
because quite apart from the madness of the design, the thin lines were technically difficult to draw, so I've been correcting bits of the painting all the way through. His geometrics are also unfathomable without exact analysis. Off the cuff copying is impossible with Miró, though I'm sure a lot of his work was improvised and unpredicted.
2. You can't really get into Miró's mindset. I tried and came out boggling.
3. There are thousands of photos (of photos of photos....?) of this painting and they all don't conform
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| Miró's original |
as far as the colours are concerned. There are some very good copies of the painting around, however, and I could not examine them all for originality!I oriented my colours on the painting shown here.
4. You have to reconcile yourself to the painting being the 'wrong' way up. If the big red blob is the sun, then it's this way up. I tried to imagine all the entities lying on a sandy beach. That cuts out the necessity of deciding which way the painting should be. Did Miró keep turning it round? I quite like it sideways on. Here's the original painting!
I'm much more at home with Kandinsky, but have only just started to re-invent his 'red oval' painting and am going to switch from acrylics to oils because they don't dry so fast!
Why do I do all this? Well, I'm a traditionalist. I learn by doing just as students of painting have done for centuries, and in the absence of a teacher, I'm still in good company with the experts of their times.
