Frans HalsFrans Hals (1580-1666) was a Dutch Baroque artist best known for his portraiture, specifically a sort of personal whimsy he manages to create in these portraits. What I mean by that is that he captures his subjects in a way that radiates personality and expression while still managing to stay within realism. This quality gives another level of realism to his works, as if these were real people you could see out on the streets.
While it can be noted that around the 1640's his color palate significantly darkened, prior to that Hals color choice was warm and vibrant. Along with his posing of subject matter, he also creates a personal and cheery quality to his work through color choice. When painting, Hals possesed an incredible intuition for color, tone and form and was able to capture these elements in a few brushstrokes as can be observed especially clearly in the clothes of his subjects where he thick thick blocks of deliberate color rather than meticulously blending each plane. |
I Initially became interested in Hals' work when I came across the Laughing Caviler, and felt a sort of connection with it because of his expression and how it looks like he's holding back a laugh. I wanted to practice capturing this expression in a painting of myself. I basically wanted to insert myself into the piece while focusing on three main elements: expression, color and use of brushstrokes. The expression would be the same as the cavilers itself however with my face instead. The colors were to math that of the painting as best as possible, just slightly tweaked to match my coloration. I wanted to create deliberate blocky brushstrokes and layering to match that of Hals'. |
.It was very important to me to try to capture the expression of the painting so I took a bunch of pictures and eventually decided on this one. I went into a drawing program and edited my over the subject in the laughing cavileer replacing him with myself. I also altered the body to look less akwardon my thinner frame. Then I put a grid a 10X10 frame over my reference photo.
Next I went to put a red wash over my over my canvass, then I put a blueish grey wash to accuratly capture the depth of the background tones. My canvass was conveniently 30" x 30" so I I put a mark every three inches on the sides in order to create a 10x10 grid so I could I accuratly capture the proportions in a way similar to my insperations ability to capture proportion. I printed out the image I had put a grid over and worked simulataniously with a pencil and a paintbrush to create a sketch/ underpainting for the skin. I used blue because I wanted to try and incorperate some of the cool glassyness that the skin of the laughing cavileer has into my own skin. In this phase I also chunked out the light areas and darker areas in the painting. Going into my project I knew that achieving the same smooth shading that Hals achieved with oil paints was going to an extremely difficult task with my acrylics. However I also knew that in his works, Hals typically only fully details the face, painting the clothes in a more blocky, less precice manner, which made me inclined to start with the clothes first so if i got drips on those sections, it would be easier to clean up than it would if I got paint on the face. Painting the base of the clothes was one of the easier processes in the painting because In my experience, darker acrylic paints typically blend better than the lighter colors, so the shirt and hat were fairly straightforward to paint. The lace took a bunch of layers of diluted off-whites to get it too look the way I wanted |