Study trip to FlorenceThis month I
travelled to Florence, Italy, to study at the Angel Art Academy the methods and techniques of the great Renaissance Masters. Surrounded by so much history and fine art it is hard not to get carried away by the romance of it all and I am amazed at just how much I packed in over the June/July period.
I have been doing my own research into the methods and history of oil painting for the last eighteen months in a bid to improve my technique and the quality of my finished paintings. The Academy was outstanding and the instruction
superb, enabling me to bring together all that I had already learned and with the new information from the course, solidifying the processes and the techniques of the past academies.Below is an example of one of the paintings I painted whilst on the course, and although it isn't quite finished, it gives an idea of the sort work we were doing.Stage one : Drawing.
As all of my still life work is done from life, the sight-size method was not new to me but was fascinating from a theory point of view. Below is my initial drawing next to the actual still life set-up I was working on.
Final Stages : The painting process is made up of many layers and it adheres strictly to the structured methods used by artists from the early renaissance up to the end of the nineteenth century. Below is the direct comparison between the initial drawing and the painting as it was left on the final day - abandoned! (We were under considerable time constraints on the course, so completion wasn't the end goal).
'Florentine Red' (unfinished)
18" x 24"
Oil on Canvas
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