Remasters
11/12/2020
For this brief we have been asked to recreate classic paintings of art using photography. Firstly we had to gather a range of ideas of what pieces and paintings we would be able to recreate with the resources we have available to us at home. And then we had to plan each of the pieces and what steps we recreate the image as we wanted to. After planning each piece, we then had to narrow it down to the three that we thought we could execute the best.
Original Ideas
(Portrait of Madame X – John Singer Sargent, Morning Sun – Edward Hopper, Shoes – Lisa Milroy, Artist’s Son – Vasily Smirnov, American Gothic – Grant Wood, The Thinker – August Rodin, Brunette in front of a Mirror – Charles Camoin)
Shoes – Lisa Milroy
Lisa Milroy is a n artist known best for her paintings of still life and everyday objects that are placed in carefully considered lines or patterns. In this case, I have chosen to recreate her painting of twenty pairs of shoes in four rows. I chose this painting specifically because there are a lot of different kinds of shoes in my home, the majority belonging to my mother.
I knew that I wouldn’t be able to recreate each pair of shoes exactly, so instead I tried to find the closest I could in terms of either colour or shape. I think I was able to match the majority of the shoes. And then, to really try and make sure they represented each shoe well, I tried my best to position each pair exactly how they were in the painting. For example the red pair in the centre bottom row have one shoe on its side, and one the right side up. I also knew that the overhead angle was very important, so I decided to take my photo in my kitchen where I was able to sit on a counter and try my best to get the overhead angle. It also helped that the floor in the kitchen was white. To make the picture look more like a painting, I used a filter that makes your pictures look more like an oil painting that has brushstrokes.
Artist’s Son – Vasily Smirnov
Vasily Smirnov is a Russian painter who specialises specifically in portraits using oil paints. From the title, I can safely assume that this is his son that he’s painted here. I decided to use my brother as my model for this photo, seeing as how he fit the majority of the criteria, those being that he was young and his hair style was almost the same.
I knew that I wouldn’t have the exact same colour of clothes and the same kind of chair available, but I think that I was able to recreate the painting closely with the resources that I had available to me. Unfortunately the biggest issue here wasn’t the lack of a bow, but the lack of other colours. However I think it’s still a good effort. I placed the dining chair in the kitchen up against the closed door, to make sure the background was as blank as it could be, and I adjusted my brothers sitting position to match the artist’s son as closely as possible. In my opinion a big part of this image is the brushstrokes, so I decided to use the same filter I used before that makes it look more like an oil painting. Vasily Smirnov’s work is still very detailed though, so I didn’t turn the filter on to high.
Portrait of Madame X – John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent was an artist who was well renowned as the ‘leading portrait artist’ of his generation. Born in 1856, John Singer Sargent created over nine hundred oil paintings and roughly two thousand watercolours, all of which depicted the upper class of the Edwardian era.
I thought that this painting would be fun to recreate, but with a modern twist. Instead of a long black dress and hair pinned up, I opted for a more party look with a half up half down hairstyle, a short dress and even showing off my tattoos to really push the modern perspective. Like in my previous remaster attempts, I used an oil painting filter to add to the effect of the look and make it seem more close to the image. I feel as though I was able to recreate the pose as accurately as I was able, even leaning against a unit to make sure the poses matched up. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to use a dark background, but I got the plainest wall I could to help.
