Toulouse Lautrec

Toulouse Lautrc was a prolific painter known alongside with Cezanne,Van Gough and Gaugin as one of the greatest painters of the Post Impressionists period.
Toulouse- Lautrec,H.(1887-89), The Hangover,(oil on canvas)(online image).Http://private Bridgeman education.com



His studies portray the nightlife and bar scenes in Montmatre. He paid particular attention to the depiction of the prostitutes who worked in the brothels. All of his subjects were of real people that played a major part in his life one of his particular strengths was his ability to paint recognisable individuals in a crowd. He created paintings where the viewer became the watcher of people whilst the people in the paintings unaware they are being watched and painted are themselves watching others. They are quite remarkable how he has managed to capture these scenes which have so much going on in them.

He was basically a draughtsman and his paintings are painted with a strong line, rather like a drawing in paint.

figures in an interior

This project required me to paint several figures in an interior. So first things first was to decide where it was that I would like to paint. I feel very self concious when I am sketching in public places and I have got some funny looks in the past. So bearing this in mind I went for the obvious choice, the local library. I wasn't sure that it was going to make a particularly interesting painting, but capturing the ordinairy day to day lives of people has been an occupation for many artists and they have created some memorable paintings that are invaluable recordings of the time. So here goes..

I went for a couple of visits and made some quick rough sketches in pencil to get a very quick impression of the place. The second time I went I tried to concentrate on trying to capture the positions and shapes of individuals. It was interesting to take in the different body language of various people and I particularly wanted to paint the very bored teenager who was so obviously struggling in completing his work for college and kept finding himself drifting off with his head in his hand. This may actually be a more interesting subject than I originally thought.
What makes a good painting? This is something that is going to be different for everyone. The subject matter doesn't necessarily need to be beautiful and the painting itself doesn't necessarily need to be beautiful, maybe its the composition or the emotion conveyed by the painting or just the ability to capture a moment on canvas... I am not sure what the answer is and I was not sure at this point what direction I wanted to go. For the time being I just need to get the different people down in my sketchbook.....

After few hours of sketching at different intervals in my library I managed to gather together some sketches and hopefully enough information for me to compose a painting.
First problem I hit was that I probably did not get nearly enough information regarding the layout of the library. I had lots of little sketches of people though. Luckily I granted myself some artistic license and composed my painting with a composite of sketches based pretty much on memory...
The second problem i encountered was that most of the people in the library were there on their own. There was not a lot of interaction, even most of the desks are placed singularly. This shouldn't be a problem, but what I found was that where I had painted the figures in there lacked a unity to the painting it all seems bitty. Although I have moved some of the figures into couples for example sitting in pairs at the desk which has kind of helped.
Also perspective proved to be a bit challenging I had to keep making sure that none of the figures were too large or too small for where they were situated.
This painting was definately challenging, but I think there have been valuable lessons learnt the main one being getting enough information down. I also think groups of figures make for a much less amateurish painting. Given the mistakes I made and lack of adequate information its not too bad for an attempt, but its definately not one of my better efforts.

Degas

Degas,E. (1884) The Laundresses,(oil on canvas).(online image). Musee D'Orsay. Available from http://bridgemaneducation.com

I have started to look at artists who have painted the human figure in their daily surroundings, the scope for this is huge as there are many artists who have devoted their time to the study of the human figure and their surroundings, in their paintings.

The first artist I looked at was Degas. When I went to the D'Orsay, I can remember being completely mesmerised by his pastel drawings of ballerinas, and his images have definately made an impression on me. There are many reasons why his work stood out so much at the time, but it was his compositional skills that struck me. I am also a keen photographer,and I was interested in the way that he would sometimes only depict half of a figure, sometimes giving the impression that they were dissapearing out of the picture,giving the impression of a snapshot.

Degas was interested in the photos of cityscapes often showing the moving figure, that were just about emerging at the time. He was also interested in Japanese prints as these often depicted cropped rather than whole figures being contained within the picture plane.

His aims were to produce beauty and mystery, although his subjects are not necessarily considered beautiful a lot of his paintings capture the day to day undertakings of Ballerinas, exhausted washerwomen and women washing and bathing all drawn and painted dispassionately with almost voyeuristic tendencies. He was essentially a draughtsman and he did not use thick paint in his paintings, some of his works have parts of the canvas that are barely covered he was more concerned with recording form and composition. He made endless studies for his paintings, also making small clay or wax models to enable him to fully understand the anatomy. He drew the subject many times so that he could full commit it to memory and would not paint directly from life.