Grant Smith

Rossi

Visual Arts II

27 October 2015

Artist Painting

I struggled slightly with this painting primarily because painting is not really my forte. I enjoyed doing the sky that was by far on of my most favorite parts, painting the actual surrounding stadium itself proved to be harder than I thought. Due to my inspiration picture being a panoramic it really put the perspective into a bunch of funny angles that without the actual football field present you wouldn't be able to tell what it was. This posed as a serious problem when painting as it made the perspective on the picture extremely difficult to draw out and even harder to paint. My artist was Vincent Van Gogh and I used his painting "Starry Night" for my inspiration to paint this picture of Alabama's crimson tide. I focused primarily on the sky of Van Gogh's painting which I incorporated into my painting with the long swooshes and the array of different colors that painted a unique path through the sky almost as if it were wind. I tried to capture this affect in the incorporation of yellow into my painting which began high, then swooped low, only to return back to high. I also noticed that much of the painting was drawn in a series of swooshes to make up one bigger picture. Using this realization I was able to draw the fans which make up the vast majority of the painting. I took the swooshes and made them small and used a variety of colors to wrap around the stadium and even on to small portions of the field. The figures you see on the field are band members which is why they are more organized and not drawn in a series of swoops and instead in stacked lines. I chose to represent them this way because they are the main focus point adjourned by the fans in the stadium so I felt that special attention to detail was needed to go towards the band to help distinguish the fans from the band. Overall I felt I could have improved on this project, I didn't feel as successful as I did after completing my perspective drawing but I feel that was more due to the difference in artistic styles. I was still relatively happy with the end product if I look at it from a distance without my glasses on and tilt my head a little. I feel I captured certain main focuses of my artists style while still being able to add my own unique and original style to the painting so in that aspect I do feel accomplished that I was able to take a grasp on my artists certain style and turn it into my own.