Lately, I decided to make watercolor studies inspired by oil paintings of famous master artists. The purpose was to interpret these paintings through watercolor and study the artists’ art styles (drawing, composition, colors, values, strokes, virtuosity etc.). This idea came after writing the Ode to daily art practice (or 9 reasons why daily art practice is important).
Below I share 3 of my studies and the reason behind selecting each oil painting. By the way, I use a Stillman and Birn sketchbook (Zeta Series) and the St Petersburg White Nights Watercolours (36 pan set).
Description of Moonlit Night in the Albertina museum
Weary of the metropolis, Nolde joined a scientific expedition to the South Seas in 1913, which inspired him to compose several impressive seascapes. During the crossing to Papua New Guinea he noted down: “Hoisting anchor, we headed once more for the vast, silent ocean, for the infinitely wide sea, which can be so furiously wild and then, for months, so uncannily still, so oppressively still…” Such impressions captivated his senses and gave him the feeling to experience the “world in its original state”. In autumn 1914, after his return to the island of Alsen in the Baltic Sea, his memories motivated him to paint such paintings as Moonlit Night. The magically gloomy evocation of silence has been achieved by a clearly structured organization of the composition and a two-dimensional manner of painting on the one hand and by a peculiarly restrained use of color entirely based on the accord of ultramarine and pale yellow on the other.