Tuesday, April 19, 2022

Patha Sarathi 3, original oil on linen canvas by Dominique Amendola

 


Partha Sarathi 3, oil painting on linen canvas 48 inches by 72 inches or 4 feet by 6 feet.  (This image is under strict copyright to Dominique Amendola. )

In this post, I will show you how I created a large painting from beginning to end.
My canvas was primed with an ocher yellow layer before starting on the canvas.
Beforehand, numerous sketches took place.







































The hardest part was to create a believable chariot.






















Once I finished with many sketches, I transferred the main sketch to the canvas and started with the sky, and the underpainting.















































The figures, chariot, and horses are entirely worked in raw umber and white.

















The background consisting of the sky and the road and field are established first. 







At this point, colors are glazed on top. This process takes long hours in front of the canvas, painting.




There are many steps to finishing a painting. You can compare some of those stages to those earlier steps.
This was my third version of this painting. Two of them found a home.


Painting is a meditation.

The goal of life is rapture. Art is the way we experience it. 


The original artwork is available.

To purchase the painting click here:

You can get all sorts of prints from me_canvas prints, framed prints, art prints, metal prints, wood prints, and more for this painting.
To purchase a print of this painting, click here:



TO SEE MORE ART GO TO MY SITE:
Dominique accepts commissions, send me an email.

FOLLOW ME ON FACEBOOK

Dominique Amendola-California, US, India, France, Classical realism and impressionism figures and landscapes painter


















Thursday, April 23, 2020

Mahaprabhu in the Jarikhanda forest, original oil painting on canvas by Dominique Amendola

Mahaprabhu in the Jarikhanda forest, oil painting on linen canvas 36 inches by 48 inches.  (This image is under strict copyright to Dominique Amendola. )

This painting illustrates a pastime of Lord Chaitanya described in the Chaitanya Charitamrita.
After some time Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu again started on His tour towards northern India, and He decided to visit Vṛndāvana and its neighboring places. He passed through the jungles of Jharikhaṇḍa (Madhya Bhārata), and all the wild animals also joined His saṅkīrtana movement. The wild tigers, elephants, bears, and deer all together accompanied the Lord, and the Lord accompanied them in saṅkīrtana. By this, He proved that by the propagation of the saṅkīrtana movement (congregational chanting and glorifying of the name of the Lord) even the wild animals can live in peace and friendship, and what to speak of men who are supposed to be civilized.

This painting is painted in a classical style using the Venitian painters techniques such as Titian, the medieval Renaissance Italian artist. I am here to show you the step by step process to realize it.

In this painting, I have used the scumbling method in the underpainting mostly. The underpainting is executed with acrylics. It helps to establish the foundation for the whole artwork. I have my own way to paint and I am not claiming this is a demo for the Venetian technique of the Renaissance. However, I really think it is close to it, with the difference that for their underpainting, they used tempera, not acrylic.

I have always begun such an elaborate composition with numerous sketches. 

Here is the final sketch ready to be transferred to the canvas:



In this sketch, you can already see how the composition revolves around lord Chaitanya and how the arm and the elephant trump circle high above his head. 

The Steps for the Acrylic layer.

My canvas was toned first with a Venitian red and I started with the black outlines of the painting and the lights are appearing as well as the shadows, painted afterward.



Everything is established from the beginning, the light and dark tones and more. This is the acrylic layer before it was scumbled.



 The scumbling is done with white acrylic paint. You will see how the thin layer of white has created some beautiful grays. That is the whole idea for using that red earth color. Once scrambled, it creates incredible gray tones and you can establish beautiful tones on top of that. In the end, the colors will vibrate with a lot of depths from that technique.


The Steps for the oil layer.


This is the first oil paint layer. I go slowly on colors avoiding strong colors at first. Notice how I treat the figure. It is painted in a gray layer at first, to establish the form and to intensify his luminous body.
The gray layer is applied to the skin colors. All the layers are glazed step by step.



Now more colors and details come. Notice how carefully I treat the figure, using glazed tones.




More colors, more details are applied until I am satisfied with the result. Compare this to the final product above.


Now I am going to show you detail views of the artwork:








Painting is a meditation.

The goal of life is rapture. Art is the way we experience it. 


The original artwork is available.

To purchase the painting click here:

You can get all sorts of prints from me_canvas prints, framed print, art print, metal print, wood print and more for this painting.
To purchase a print of this painting, click here:



TO SEE MORE ART GO TO MY SITE:
Dominique accepts commissions, send me an email.

FOLLOW ME ON FACEBOOK

Dominique Amendola-California, US, India, France, Classical realism and impressionism figures and landscapes painter
















Thursday, July 18, 2019

The Process for creating an oil painting of "Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma", a classical approach by Dominique Amendola

Vishnu, Shiva, and Brahma, oil painting on linen canvas 40 inches by 44 inches.  (This image is under strict copyright to Dominique Amendola. )


This painting is painted in a classical style using the Venitian painters techniques such as Titian, the medieval Renaissance Italian artist. It represents Lord Brahma explaining the Vedas or the mystical nature of the Absolute to Lord Shiva taking his inspiration from Lord Vishnu. The Vedic scriptures are the spiritual texts of Ancient India, written in the Sanscrit language. 


In this painting, I have used the scumbling method in the underpainting mostly. The underpainting is executed with acrylics. It helps to establish the foundation for the whole artwork. I have my own way to paint and I am not claiming this is a demo for the Venetian technique of the Renaissance. However, I really think it is close to it, with the difference that for their underpainting, they used tempera.

I have always begun such an elaborate composition with numerous sketches. This is a commissioned artwork for the publication of one of the Upanishads, a Vedic text of ancient India.

Here are the first few steps:



I first figure out the basic composition. This sketch looks like nothing, but it has the correct ratio for my final painting, and the composition is based on the golden section.



Each figure will then be elaborately sketched and the background studied.




This is an example of how the sketch for Brahma progressed.




Shiva and Visnu came next.


Even so, you can see very little of Shiva's chair in the final painting, I designed it entirely so I could cover it with a tiger skin in a believable manner.

The tiger skin took many shapes, but in the end, I used my imagination to make it look believable.




After many steps, the sketch was ready to be transferred on the canvas.

I also produced a tone sketch and a color sketch before starting to paint so that I knew clearly where the light would fall and how the colors would go. 

The Steps for the Acrylic layer.

My canvas was toned first with a Venitian red.


This a large painting. I first transferred the final sketch to the toned canvas. Then started to establish the values. As you can see, because the canvas is toned with a dark color, I start with the lights.



This is the acrylic layer before it was scumbled. The scumbling is done with white and I do not show that step. but if you enlarge the cloud where Vishnu lies, you will see how the thin layer of white has created some beautiful grays. That is the whole idea for using that red earth color. Once scrambled, it creates incredible gray tones and you can establish your gray layer on top of that. In the end, the colors will vibrate with a lot of depths from that technique.


Here I started the gray layer on Brahma. notice the scumbled layer from the previous step on Shiva



The gray layer is applied to the skin colors. All the layers are glazed step by step.



Gray layer finished over Shiva, more and more layers of colors and details are being refined.


More colors, more details are applied





Refining the details




Now you can see more details about the finished artwork:






I kept Lord Vishnu blurred because He belongs to Lord Brahma's vision.





Painting is a meditation.


The original artwork is available.

To purchase the painting click here:

ORIGINAL ARTWORK 

You can get all sort of prints from me_canvas prints, framed print, art print, metal print, wood print and more for this painting.
To purchase a print of this painting, click here:



TO SEE MORE ART GO TO MY SITE:
Dominique Amendola-California, US, India, France, Classical realism and impressionism figures and landscapes painter