Initial Artist Emulation Blog Post

Joan Miro expresses surrealism to his audience by using abstract lines and cartoon-like figures and relating them to one another through color.  He uses a lot of bright colors and tends to stray more towards blues, reds, and yellows with hints of other colors in there as well.  These ideas are translated in my work because I focus on his color schemes and primarily involve primary colors with hints of other ones to convey his message.  I also use a lot of dots and abstract designs, as well as simplistic shapes to portray Miro's intentions and relate them closely to his other works.  Although Miro was also a sculptor and ceramicist, he mainly focused on painting in his final works.  To prepare, Miro would do sketches using pencil and then further translate his ideas into larger paintings.  He aimed to make his paintings "child-like" by using simplistic forms instead of focusing all his energy on capturing the realistic qualities of his works.  Miro tended to jumble up a lot of miscellaneous images and connect them to one another through his colors in both his sketches and his final paintings.  He tried to include a simple message in his works by using simple shapes and colors but connecting them all together in his final piece.

Color to Life

My work reflects the same color palette as the original.  I incorporated similar shades of colors to their corresponding place on the painting in trying to resemble the original as close as possible.  I changed up the mark making slightly in my version of the painting because I used shorter brush strokes and included more variation of color within those strokes.  The original painting had longer brush strokes of all the same color, but I was interested in playing with the depth of each color and section/layer of my painting.  In terms of style, I tried to keep it as similar as possible to the original painting by using simplistic shapes to portray the landscape.  In this project, I learned that painting is a long, tedious process that involves a lot of painting over and redoing.  I ended up painting over so many shapes and colors trying to find that perfect balance that I was looking for.  I think my overall canvas is pretty unified because I applied similar brush strokes to every section of the painting except for the clouds: I used a different strategy to paint them but I like the way they contrast against the rest of the painting.  I think I spent an equal amount of time trying to perfect each section of my painting to give it a uniform, flowing look.  I feel a lot more comfortable as a painter after this project than I did before.  I feel a lot more comfortable working with paint and the various brushes, and I like the way they let you express the same picture in a myriad of ways.  I want to explore painting more by painting different things rather than landscapes and just getting more experience with it under my belt.  I think the more I use the medium, the easier it will become to express what you want.  A limitation that paint has for me is the detail, especially concerning small lines.  For example, it is difficult for me to not blend color and keep different colored sections to themselves: a lot of my paint ends up getting mixed together on the lines.  I want to work on keeping those areas tidy and be able to express small details using paint and a brush.

Original: by Ernest Ludwig Kirchner