LinaSundqvistIllustration

 

I found a new favorite artist - Paul Bril (1554-1626). He was a flemish painter who greatly influenced the landscape art in Italy and northern Europe. He spent most of his time painting in Rome and his Italian landscapes are the most beautiful of all artists, according to me of course but most likely to many others too. 

The yellows and turquoise is what really makes me continue to stare. The turquoise and blue backgrounds are common for medieval and renaissance art. It really puts an emphasis on how the atmosphere is blue. It's not the most realistic as the colors are really vibrant and it looks more like a fantasy world which I love.

This painting looks late autumn to me which it probably is since they are chopping the trees. I wish I had found the names for all of the paintings but I didn't. I should look more into that but I won't because it really doesn't matter that much to me.

I love the red ochre contrast with the pale green background. I couldn't really find a color that fit that red brown color so I had to mix it myself. I know people would have probably just used indian red or venetian red, maybe even burnt sienna, but I don't think they fit enough. It's most likely that the painting is painted with oil paints and I'm talking about watercolors. Still... I like to experiment myself.

Maybe I should put perylene green in my palette, which is a green that looks almost black in thick layers.

This tree... look at that tiny ivy. Ivy is my weakness in paintings.

He painted with oils but I prefer watercolors and gouache and even colored pencils. Oil paints have a strong scent and I found the water based oil paints also smelled too much for my tiny apartment and I have two dogs. I also find them inconvenient and I'm not patient enough to wait for it to dry.

I love the extreme contrast. I had a phase of realism some time back and I think I got caught up in the hyper-realism hype. I tend to like illustrations more than realistic fine art so I don't know what I was thinking there but it did make me learn to create like a 3D effect with contrast which is never bad to learn. I have started to drift back to more semi-realism and I have also started to appreciate abstract art a lot more. This kind of art is my favorite though.

I have the primatek color amazonite from Daniel Smith and although there has been some controversy around the primatek line and other Daniel Smith paints, I love it and use it in my medieval palette. They apparently did use amazonite in their palette back then so that is exciting to me. This paintings greens look a lot like mixing lemon yellow and ultramarine blue and also amazonite. I would use the mars yellow and yellow iron oxide for the yellow but if I wanted it to pop I would put in some nickel azo yellow which is a color I can't live without. It's earthy in thick layers but bright yellow in thinner washes and it makes the most vibrant greens.

 

A lot of watercolorists cringe when somebody uses white or black in their paints but I love it. I'm not afraid to make more gloomy paintings and to stick out, plus I love gouache and adding titanium white makes your paint more opaque, similar to gouache. I usually mix in some color in my blacks though but sometimes I don't. For this painting I would use indanthrone blue which is a deep blue, almost black, but since I'm not afraid to mix medias, I also use waterproof indian ink for the darkest black parts. I find it more convinient to have the darkest parts waterproof and I also use acrylic inks sometimes, which makes even more vibrant colors than watercolor, plus it is waterproof.

I love how much emphasis they put on the blue in the atmosphere during the medeival/renaissance. You see how blue the town in the background is, and sometimes it's even more blue. 

I still have one spot left in my medieval inspired palette and I'm thinking about adding oxide of chromium to it, which looks similar to the green on the right side. It's opaque and have like a dry muddy texture which puts some people off but I like it and it's really beautiful in mixes. I will try to mix it on my own and I suspect you can mix a similar color with lemon yellow, ultramarine blue and titanium white but I have to try it. I did manage to mix my own venetian red with deep scarlet, brown iron oxide and titanium white and I'm going to really think about what color will earn the last spot in my palette.

Stag Hunt (1620). 

I love the colors so much and I made some research, if you can call it that, to make my own medieval palette. Some of the paints isn't available today as some were really toxic so I tried to pick current pigments that fit. I actually ignored some of the standard colors like raw sienna and burnt umber, because I found more similar colors that may have the same pigments but they're a little different. Instead of raw sienna I prefer mars yellow and instead of burnt umber I prefer brown iron oxide. I also use yellow iron oxide which is a bit more golden and granulates more than mars yellow. 

Here's an ink sketch he made. I wonder if he used walnut ink because it was common, but it's fugitive. If it was lightfast I would use it too but I will keep to my acrylic inks instead.

I hope I will get as talented someday! I'm starting to learn to draw architecture and my goal is to be able to draw it from my head. My references lies in my head but I have to use real references in order to learn to draw the pictures in my head. It is like you collect information in a picture archive in your head and if you collect enough you are able to pull anything from that archive and create whatever you want without any photos. 

Well that's that. Have a great day!