Hi Everyone! So glad you could join me here on our road to ruin. Hope you're doing good. I wanted to share a new painting technique(to me anyways) that I learned from the master Gerhard Richter. A friend of mine John Caplice (Amazing Photographer, he also does Weddings and other occasions) commissioned me to (re)create a painting that he'd purchased at a dark time in his life. He was also helping out a fellow artist friend that needed a boost. My friend had this painting for years but after a while when the grey clouds separated and life was good again he couldn't bare to look at it anymore, that time was done for him.
To go back a bit in late 2014 my same friend commissioned me for a couple of Elsa Frozen watercolor paintings that he had given to his little five and seven yr old nieces for Christmas. Themselves and the family absolutely loved them so when my friend took another look at his old depressing painting he thought "I know someone that could give it some life again." I'm never going to turn down a well paying gig so I said Hell Yeah!
Here we have the original Painting
This was the initial go, the breaking of the seal. Starting out I was thinking city skyline scenes and then an alien attack broke out all of a sudden. A kind of War of the Worlds scenario started to bubble up and thats fine with me. The base layer is actually the house interior paint and I carved away into it displaying some moody underpainting. Charcoal stick/pencil was used for drawing city-shapes as well as colored pencil for the peach and red color.
Step 1
The next session had immense Richter influence since that's what my friend wanted it to resemble. It was difficult to not be completely taken over by Richter's work. I've been consumed by his work for years. So here we have the second go around. After looking at a short Richter Video displaying his painting technique I was blown away and just completely hooked on exploring this fascinating way of painting. What gets me going is how I'll eventually transform this process and make it my own. What I love about this way of painting is that there's an instant gratification factor involved. A layer that looks like its underneath another is actually above and there's special moments where a great atmospheric aspect is created. It's so goddamn good! Ahhhhh! After seeing this picture my friend doesn't want me to touch it until he sees it in person.
Step 2
And here we have the final exploration, John felt that the "X" in the painting really stopped him from entering the piece. There was something bothering me about it as well, something that didn't make the work feel mature enough. After I made the alterations the experience completely opened up for me and John was extatic. There's a lot more atmosphere and vibration with the addition of the blues coupled with the scattering of the yellows.
As you saw in the Richter Video he uses these giant custom scrapers to reveal haunting under layers but necessity is the mother of invention so I just used some canvas boards that I had laying around getting the same technique, pretty much anyways. There's so much more to do of course. I must say that these were all taken by camera phone. My friend is actually a professional photographer so he'll be taking the final portfolio worthy photo.
If you are in need of an amazing photographer John specializes in Corporate, Weddings, Location Portraits, Product and Food Photography.
