Painting- Art Nouveau

The style I chose for my painting is art nouveau. I chose this style because I feel it really reflects and expresses me. I found it portrayed the very feminine side of me. Art nouveau is all about the swirls and naturally curved lines. In my piece I got to use a lot of swirls and curvy lines. The background shows my personality because it shows how I like to be very simple yet elegant. I really enjoyed using this style for my piece because I am also fond of things being fancy and decorative. Also I used the warm colours red and yellow because it resembles my warm personality. Of course the swirls in the background are forming inside the ring tying everything together.

My original idea for the painting was quite similar to the finished portrait. Although along the way I had to make a few changes. The first change I made was while painting the skin. A first I decided to make the flesh a very flat tone with no value at all. It was all one colour which was an orange-brown. Later I decided to change the flesh to something a bit more olive and neutral. After I changed the entire original colour of the flesh, I added in value. I ended up putting the lights and darks into all of the flesh. The background for my painting was originally going to be a ring with smaller circles inside of it. I later changed this because I felt like it was not working for my art nouveau style. I needed something a bit more swirly and fancy to really show the style I chose.

I used some simple techniques to achieve my painting. The first step I had to use for my painting was to project it onto my canvas. This is so I could get the proportions right on my larger scaled portrait. Because dark pencil marks would show through the paint, I had to make sure I worked light while tracing lines. When I started working with the paint, I generally used thick brush strokes for most parts where the paints needed to be one solid colour. Although I used thick paint for larger areas, I had to use thinner paint to achieve smooth crisp curves. To make my paint a bit thinner all I did was add water to it. Adding water to my paint made it a lot easier for it to sink in and not leave white spots. It was also much easier to make clean curves. Another technique I used was feathering my brush. Adding value to the flesh required me to use my brush in a feathering motion to blend colours nicely.

The hardest part of this painting would have to be the flesh. I found it most difficult mixing the right colours to do this part. The colours had to be changed several times to get the colour that I thought was fine. It also was very time consuming because there had to be the right amount of darks and lights in the right place. For example, I put too much of the darker shade on the face and had to wait for it to completely dry each time to fix it again. I also had to make sure I mixed enough of the flesh tone so that I would not run out and have to make it again.

If I had to change anything it would be the colours I chose to use. I would probably use different tones of the colours I have used. I would change the colours to something more neutral like lighter shades. The lighter colours would make the background stand out less and not be as bold. Then I would brighten up the colour used for the main part of the portrait just a bit to stand out more. Overall, I really liked the end product of my painting.