Emulating – Chris Forsey

April Colour and Light
Copied from Chris Forsey
Mixed Media On Paper
26cm x 18cm (10" x 7")

Copying paintings is a good way to learn about the thought processes and techniques of other artists. Traditionally, you copy the works of the old masters, but I chose a painting by Chris Forsey because I have a few of his DVDs which gave me a head start towards understanding his approach.

I didn’t want to make a slavish copy, so I picked one of his acrylic paintings which is much bigger and a different format to the paper I am working on. You can see the original here:

http://www.claremontantiques.com/chris-forsey/2414-chris-forsey.html

Elaine and I spent last week walking around Brecon and Abergavenny and staying in some lovely hotels – this view could almost pass as a view of the river Usk.

I started by making a tonal sketch – which wasn’t very accurate and which I didn’t use much in my preparations.

April Colour and Light - Tonal Sketch

What really helped was breaking the scene into shapes and layers and working out how to paint each element.

April Colour and Light - Shapes and Layers

I enjoyed this exercise and learnt a lot from it, so I will repeat it with more pictures by some of the older and contemporary masters of watercolour and mixed media.

The colours in the picture at the top of the post are not completely true to the original. Our scanner seems to be having problems with red and cyan. I’ve corrected it as well as I can, but I’m wondering if a scanner can develop colour blindness and what I can do to cure it.