Master copy After William Bouguereau*Work in progress....Oil on paper

[Muhammad Sida]

Hello everyone, I've always admired Bouguereau since I was 21 years old...
One of my modern artist collegues once called me a "chocolate painter" because of my admiration for the man's work. Kept saying that his work was too smooth, not painterly like or whatever...

Anyway, WB paintings were intimidating to me, I never dared to copy him in oil....only in drawings or colored pencils..which i at the time used to copy a rembrandt, but that would be me sidetracking again.

He's still intimidating, but I've been learning to put it aside for this master copy I'm in progress of doing this week, I needed to learn from this painting.

So the painting I'm copying is the painting of "Madame la Comtesse de Cambaceres" painted in 1895. I'm painting it from a highquality photoprint...dimentions are 20x27.5cm
My Painting is also 20x27.5cm.

[Muhammad Sida]

This is what Is what I've painted so far. I wish I had the original to paint from but ...

[Muhammad Sida]

This is my painting.
I always try and study a paintings composition to understand it 1st before I paint it, it helps me with placement, the more I understand the painting the more I could paint it intuitively.

[Mike McCarty]

Muhammad,

I think Mr. B. would approve. His painting is exquisite and yours looks to be dead on.

Your choice of oil on paper is an interesting one. Would you explain for us your reasoning for this combination of materials? It wasn't Bouguereau's choice, was it?

[Michele Rushworth]

I like your approach to color!

[Muhammad Sida]

Mike: Thank you very much I sure do hope so, his painting is exquisite and I wish I knew more about his technique.
What I know is that he painted this painting on canvas dimentions were 90x121cm
(35.43"x3' 11.64")

I chose paper for a couple of reasons, 1st I wanted to put a painting in my sketchbook, I thought it would be a good idea to have quite a few paintings in there instead of sketchs to show to clients, I thought it would have a good impression.
2nd if anything goes wrong I could always turn the page and start over )

I prepared the paper 1st with a white gesso primer Winsor&Newton, paper would absorb too much oil so I figured if I use a primer it would be better.

Michele: Thank you, glad you like it, I thought a colorful approach would be more fiting to add life, and to help me in the finish

[Lewis MacKenzie]

I'd never even heard of William Bouguereau before until this year. How embarrassing is that?! An absolute consumate master and he seems to have been retrospectively reduce to a kind of pantomime "baddy" in the story of impressionism.

Copy's looking good so far, have you done any more work on it since you posted this? I would say that you've exaggerated the chroma a bit, but I'm sure you're aware of that and are just feeling your way at the moment. Besides which, I think it's better to start with the colours too strong and bring them down, rather than try to bring them up when they're to dull.

You might have seen this article before, but it contains some little snippets of information about his technique. Might be of help.

http://www.artrenewal.org/articles/T...EREAUpage1.php

[Muhammad Sida]

Lol, well I Forgot about this article completely, It was wiped from my memory because of 3D.
Man those little snippets on page 3 are quite awsome, of course I won't find some of these materials here in Egypt so I'll just have to order them I geuss.
I wouldn't have known anything about him if it weren't for a book I found in the AUC bookstore here in cairo...
The things some of his contemporary art critics said about him were just comical...and sad.

No I havn't done any work on it since I posted this for a few reasons,
1st the paint texture was bothering me so I needed to soften it or make the surface smooth enough and I wasnt really sure how to approach it.

2- When I tried to oil out a few areas the Oil just acts as if it was like water on an oily surface which was strange, I did not use any waterbased pigments in there.

And I got a bit busy with a couple of portraits, one of them was finished yesterday.

I think I'll use Bouguereau's approach with the pallet knife for the paint texture. thanks dude for telling me about the article that was very helpful

I do tend to exaggerate the chroma a bit when I paint, I feel better about the painting when I do that VS painting it dull and it is much easier to just glaze over them to bring them down,
And layers beneath influence the glazed colors above them so I tend to do it always when I'm building up my painting layers.

I'll be working on this pretty soon and I'll post its latest progress.

[Muhammad Sida]

I'll be working on the 1st painting later. I've decided to start a new one that I'll be updating on a regular basis....I've been busy with other freelance projects but now I've managed to take sometime for myself....ISA I'll be posting many other Bouguereau studies on this thread, I have decided to study his paintings, It was a little guessing game I used to play with myself in my head without practical application, but now I think is as a good a time as any.

I started this one as I did the other from a high quality print of the painting, only this time I used canvas. The yellow of the canvas is cold pressed linseed oil applied thinly and left to dry, then I applied a thin glaze of burnt umber/burnt sienna and some yellow ochre. After that I used turpentine very few, just enough to dampin my brush and then started to lay in the main masses/areas of the painting. 2nd stage I started to paint in secoundary details with burnt umber, burnt sienna & some yellow ochre.

When that stage was done I left it to dry then applied another thin glaze of burnt umber and then started painting with Flake white...I used very little/no medium at this stage, It was all about brush pressure and the thin layer of burnt umber beneath.

Here are the progress pictures

[Muhammad Sida]

So that you may see a better preview ....