Anna by Swedish painter Bruno Liljefors
In your inspiration at this time: Anna by Swedish painter Bruno Liljefors.
(Click on right here to obtain a high-resolution photograph of the portray.)
What I really like most about this portray is the attention-grabbing mixture of realism and unfastened, painterly brushwork. Liljefors painted the topic (Anna) with effective rendering and readability while the remainder of the portray is extra relaxed and impressionistic. There’s no mistaking what the focus is and the place Liljefors desires us to look.
The effective rendering additionally performs into the character of the topic, together with her hair carried out up, good clothes and niknaks, and youthful and female qualities. The unfastened, impressionistic brushwork performs into the character of nature and its untamed and unrefined magnificence.
There’s a pleasing combine of sentimental and onerous edges. The gentle edges ease the transition between the topic and the environment. The onerous edges add readability and draw our consideration in the direction of the focus. They’re like exclamation factors within the portray.
The hat on the bottom performs an vital function. It offers our eyes one thing else to bounce between. The place of it helps draw our consideration into the portray. There’s a delicate shade hyperlink between the crimson accents on the hat and the topic’s lips. And it’s additionally a part of a unfastened zig-zag movement that takes our eyes on a journey to the focus (see the picture under).
If we slender in on nature, a number of intricate leaves and flowers do a lot of the work. Every part else is slightly easy and obscure. Sir Arthur Streeton additionally did this fairly successfully in lots of his landscapes.
My solely criticism is that the topic appears to be like a bit stiff and inflexible. Which may be because of the pose or the topic’s clothes, however regardless, I believe a bit extra fluidity may go a great distance. (It’s vital to search for methods you would possibly enhance or do otherwise when analyzing grasp work. This helps take the grasp artists down off a pedestal so we are able to see them for who they have been: artists similar to us.)
Thanks for studying! If you happen to ever need to study extra, begin with my Portray Academy course.
Dan Scott
Draw Paint Academy
