Bouguereau challenge
 

Hello everyone!

Because I admire Bouguereau so much and I do so want to improve my work in every way I set myself a very difficult challenge and I have attached the results.

I am reasonably happy with the results considering that I am not, and never will be any where near the goal set by myself......who is?

Any comments by yourselves are always appreciated.

Thank you for looking.

Barbara :)

Very well done! I especially like the first one. He has always been one of my favorite artists. In college, I had one of his posters up on my wall.
Again, they are lovely - nice work.

I also like the first one best. If you'd like some more detailed critiques it would be helpful if you could post the original images that you were copying.

Barbara, did you find yourself scumbling a lot towards the end? I did a just a head study of the first one and it was a great learning tool.

Thank you Elizabeth, Michele and Virginia.

Michele. I have attached my reference photo for the first one as that seems to be the best, that is, going on the reaction from you good people. I don't know whether I have the other two reference shots and may have deleted them. They were of course, taken from the internet.

I am going to have a browse on the internet to find another picture to copy from the Masters. Does anybody know where I can get good quality large format jpg files from? It is a bit of a struggle when the files are so small.

Virginia. Yes, I did find copying Bourguereau a great learning tool and a joy to copy. I did scumble a lot towards the end.

Thanks for looking and commenting.

Barbara :)

Barbara here are two great places:

Artchive

This a site run by Mark Harden, it is free but has ads, unless you want to join for 50.00, which I highly recommend because it becomes password protected, ads go away and he sends you some great cds of the site with all the images.

The other is the ARC - Art Renewal Center

The one thing that really stands out to me is the color. Bouguereau's flesh is very green in the shadows. Your flesh (light and shadow ) are pretty red. But very nice job overall!

Thanks Beth and Jen.

Beth. I visited artchive and the file sizes and quality are just what I've wanted so thank you very much for that, I wish I had have known about this site earlier! Never mind, better late than never! I have dowloaded a few and I'm torn between 'Meditation' and 'Bathing child' for my next challenge.

Jen. Yes, I do agree with you on the flesh tones but whenever I try to match Bouguereau's skin tones they turned out very muddy so I went with what I knew worked for me. However, I think that I will have another attempt on this next challenge.

Thanks again :)

Barbara