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Today I will go through the Russian Impressionist style of painting, or at least my best _impression_ of it being I'm an American who's just seen a ton of Russian art and like read some books and saw two videos. You start with this paint, and then end up with that paint.pic.twitter.com/YdDInPws3I
Well folks, the demo of Russian Impressionism is a bust because the stupid DJI Osmo Pocket screwed up the focus...again. Here's the video anyway, then another tweet of the painting and I'm going to do another one so I can get this right.pic.twitter.com/wsnNt50Jra
Here's the painting, but I'm going to do it again with proper focus so I can use snips of the video to talk about the process. It kind of needs video to know what's going on.pic.twitter.com/hUQdtpI9D1
Also, I'm realizing I can't do just a timelapse of the painting. Half the magic of this style is how the paint is mixed. So, here's the palette. See how I have a big pile of white in the center and then lighter colors on the left and darker on the right?pic.twitter.com/EQpBWfDXfG
Now, see the final palette? The white acts a a divider between the lighter and darker sides, and the colors on each side can also mix and accidentally touch and it won't look bad. The rationale behind this is you're just going for it so you don't mix the paint a whole ton.pic.twitter.com/mfWvk7OZEg
You're painting a lighter part, so you just hit the left side and grab a few colors, mix 'em up quick and not fully, then paint them on. This keeps it organized while you're making a mess. Also, see how it's kind of disorganized by *inside* these piles is common color.pic.twitter.com/nR55kSPlRx
Now compare the two scenes to see the effect this has. See how the left painting is very strong, lots of energy and texture, with colors showing through but mixing optically. The more "logically" painted one is more soft, realistic color, no texture, less abstract.pic.twitter.com/XkuDbgqoMB
If you take a look at the video again (sorry about the focus) you can see that I'm still using a block-in general to specific style, but I'm starting off with almost pure color. The reasoning is as you refine the painting you'll mix in more and more colors so the chroma drops.pic.twitter.com/rHMGxBtwrK
Comparing the two painting again, in the russian impresionist style I'm mixing more optically by using color to push paint around and paint into it, move it, and adjust it, and that drops the high chroma down as you paint. It's basically a hack of a certain "mistake" people makepic.twitter.com/nSpmqmqp1o
Let's say in the previous painting I was at this stage and I said, "Oh crap, that shadow should be more yellow." So I grab some yellow and I start pushing it into the shadow. Since the shadow is already very gray and "realistic" adding more color will make it turn mud gray.pic.twitter.com/WogoQv0ITY
In the other painting the idea is to exploit that fact and *start* with a high chroma not very mixed blockin, done not too accurately. *Then* when you come back in to move things by painting into paint there (or change the color, or shape, or edges) you drop chroma.
That why if you look at the sky, there's chunks of red, because I had to change the shape of the bushes, and I only had some reddish-blue from doing some other shadows. Or how the bushes seem to fit into the sky because I had to paint into the sky with green and yellow.pic.twitter.com/fuVJLzgdPg
This painting was a total of about 30 minutes, but if I kept working it and altering it and refining it eventually it would become not as intense and have more refined details mostly on accident. In other painting styles if you kept working the painting you'd destroy it.
The other hack to this style of painting is the exploitation of optical mixing. Optical mixing is where I make something seem like it's mixed in the paint by just putting the two colors next to each other and letting the optics of your eye (and brain's perception) mix it.pic.twitter.com/x0xjgZMUJ4
So if you take this still of the painting (shrunk down) the bushes look like they don't have really red in them, but are just dull green, and you can't really see any orange. They "read" as green bushes that are not crazy green.pic.twitter.com/jI1m4wTEhN
But if I zoom in close you can see that there is very pure yellow and red right next to the green, even straight orange. Up close, it has an abstract quality. Far away these color textures mix together optically before hitting your eye and create a scintillation effect.pic.twitter.com/hPiCMQoSSC
This is what Van Gogh was doing, and it's also why photos of his paintings (and Monet's) are not very good. Cameras don't have a brain that interprets optical mixing so it doesn't show it as well, but if you walked up close to this painting you'd see he does it.pic.twitter.com/OqmKaEP93k
I'll do a better actual process demo tomorrow, but that's the "theory" behind the Russian Impressionism style. It's exploiting things about paint that normally cause people problems but in this style make for very interesting energetic paintings full of color and abstraction.
Ehem...assuming you can actually do it. Since it is using some common mistakes to make a painting sometimes you go too far and then end up actually just making a painting that's a muddy horrible mess that makes no sense. But, that's why the palette knife is for. Scrape it!
Final point: With all impressionist art you have to look at them from two distances: 1. Far away and they "snap" together and look real with a glow and movement to them. It sometimes hurts people's eyes. 2. Up close and it looks abstract and interesting. Stand back and look:pic.twitter.com/Ft5qZqoHNQ
Addendum: I almost forgot 1 tiny point that helps this style work: One "rule" you do follow is to remove texture from the dark passages. If you have texture in shadows then they look like they aren't shadows because they have "volume", so you knife them down periodically.pic.twitter.com/38Hrl8XDuR
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