Gardening Paintings - Influenced by Ben Snijder's Work

This week, I'm finishing up my semester-long college painting class. It's kept me up to my elbows in oil paints since January.

Final Project: select a master artist, create a series of four paintings (minimum size: 18" x 24") that are influenced by studying the master artist. Influenced by, not copy. And, complete in 6 weeks.

My Artist: Dutch-born artist, Ben Snijders http://www.bensnijders.nl/

I like the use of palette knife and broad brush strokes of Snijder's work.

Painting 1:
Influenced by Snijder's painting "Still life with red accents and enamel"
Photo of my still life set-up:



For this painting, I opted to use complementary colors of orange and blue, versus the monotone approach shown in Snijder's influence painting.

Painting 2:
Influenced by Snijder's painting "Two Bottles of Red"
Photo of my still life set-up:

Although I did add yellow flowers to the final painting. I must admit, this is my LEAST favorite of the 4 in the series.

Painting 3:
Influenced by Snijder's painting "With Barbara"
Photo of my still life set-up:

I used denim as the theme here, taken from Snijder's composition. I simply threw a pair of my jeans up on the stand to serve as my background.

In progress photo of the painting:

Painting 4:
Influenced by Snijder's painting "Blue Pots"

Snijder's painting is monotone in blues, and for mine I opted to use purples. For the background, I tossed in several purple shirts, and a purple towel!

And, the final painting of peat pots and crocus.

Whew!! What put this project in perspective is learning that Snijder's has taken up to a year to complete ONE painting!

Twitter Friends to the Rescue!
Part of our class presentation had to include a bit about our chosen artist's background and process. In researching Snijder's, I came across an 8 minute YouTube interview of him that was completely in Dutch.



I could tell that between minutes 2:30-4:00 that Snijder's is describing how he goes about setting up his still life.

What to do? I reached out to my Twitter artist pal Debbie Lamey MacDonald (@lameymacdonald) of Nova Scotia to see if she knew Dutch or knew anyone who spoke Dutch and could provide a translation.

Being the wonderful Twitter pal that she is, she reached out to her followers.

Within a day, Evelyn McCorristin Peters (@EvelynMcCPeters), another Twitter artist friend from Florida, responded. Her hubby is native to the Netherlands and could provide the translation! Many, many thanks to Debbie, Evelyn and her husband. Being able to include the 1.5 minute piece of the video clip as part of my presentation was the perfect addition! The prof and classmates got a chuckle.

The Translation:
If you wish to view the video and wonder what is said between minutes 2:30-4:00, here's a quick overview:
Snijder's prefers to focus on models and still life over landscapes. He prefers them because you can make the composition exactly how you want it to look. He built the studio himself so he would have the correct light. He says the winter light is the best and most beautiful.

The still life they discuss is the first still life for that year. The interviewer asks where does the still life begin and end in the set up? Snijder's says he constructs the still life display bigger than he is going to paint, so he can chose the best composition. In this one he liked the blues and the piece of red cloth so he placed the red in the middle. For balance he put a leaf on the left and other objects on right. He has worked on this painting for a year, it is complete. Some go very quickly and some take a long time.

He is very careful about what he shows to the world. He will refuse to sell a painting if he does not think it is good enough.

Related posts:
If you liked this post, please visit my other "final project" posts for drawing class over the past year:

* Drawing II: Influenced by Berthe Morisot: A Series of 4 Oil Stick Paintings
* Drawing I: Teapots in Subtractive Chalk

I'm thinking about taking Black and White Photography for Fall semester. I hope to post photos of in-class paintings soon. Thanks for stopping by!

Teapots

This week, I'm finishing up a 15-week college drawing class focused entirely on black and white medium. I'm a returning student. And, even though I went to college years ago and graduated with the more practical marketing/business degree, this past year my creative side got the best of me and I decided to return to the college classroom to work on my drawing skills.


Even though I am always creating and drawing and have taken workshops here and there, I've often felt that I've never "officially learned to draw from the experts". I guess the fact that I work on a college campus gave me the added 'oomph' to step back into the classroom.

Interestingly, just last week, I read another artist's blog and could really appreciate her discussion about it never being too late or you being too old to pursue your artistic talents.


Throughout the course, we worked with pencil, conte crayon, charcoal, ink wash, bamboo sticks dipped in ink, charcoal dust, and oil sticks. For the final project, students were to choose a theme and create four drawings using the same application. I chose subtractive chalk and my theme was teapots.

To create a subtractive chalk drawing, the artist covers the entire page with charcoal - making sure it is mushed and smudged into the page so that the white paper no longer exists. Then, from observation (and with really messy charcoal-blackened hands), you begin to erase out the picture - adding and erasing charcoal - until you have pushed and worked the drawing to your satisfaction.

Although the class has been lots of fun and I've learned plenty, I cannot tell you how starved I am to work with color again!