After Carel Fabritius.
They say, if you want to learn any new skill, you must study and emulate the greats and the experts within that field, which is precisely what I have aimed to do here.
After reading the book by Donna Tartt, called 'The Goldfinch' which has the famous painting of the same title by the 17th-century Dutch master, Carel Fabritius, at its center, I began a quest to create my own version of this beautiful little gem using the digital painting package ArtRage 5.
However, instead of creating a direct copy of the original painting, I opted to try and invent my own composition borrowing certain essential elements from the Fabritius work and incorporating them into my interpretation, most noticeably, the chain and bar.
This painting package allows me to make marks within the software that emulates any traditional medium including, oil paint, watercolour paint, graphite, charcoal, pastel (oil and chalk) as well as marker pen, airbrush, and blending tools. I can choose any style of brush or dry medium; square, round, hog hair or sable, chunky or fine, and mix my own unique palette from the onboard colour wheel. It is truly remarkable.
The software also allows you to build up texture by emulating the brushmarks as if in wet paint and blend colour directly within the painting, again in the same way you can when using actual paint onto a substrate.
This allows for greater freedom in being able to push and pull the medium around and manipulate it to achieve the effect you need than the traditional methods allow.
Here, as you can see in the full version of my painting (left) and in the detailed image below, I have taken great care to render the brushstrokes to be as close to those of Carel Fabritius's painting style, as possible.
I was also able to sample areas of colour from the image of the original painting and develop the colour palette via many semi-transparent layers, in much the same way I would go about a painting using traditional methods of paint on canvas.
The Goldfinch - After Carel Fabritius
Digital paint in ArtRage 5
20cm x 30cm
The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius.
The following images show a screenshot of the work at the line drawing stage within the software with a 'timelapse' of it in progress and how it looks printed onto a gallery wrapped canvas.
Once the painting is finished, it is saved and exported as a high-resolution digital file in the popular and most widely used formats, such as JPEG and PNG files. This is perfect for being able to create multiple professional quality prints of the work onto paper or canvas.
