A Closer Look at a Masterpiece
I’ve recently been playing with animation using some of my favorite Old Master paintings. Intending to post a detail photo of Still Life with Flowers and Fruit, by Jan Van Huysum on my Instagram feed, I thought, why not animate the tiny insects and water droplets on the petals? I worked on it for an entire day and evening — I couldn’t stop! New animation-worthy moths, butterflies and wispy leaves kept revealing themselves. Studying the exquisite detail was a joy.
In doing this, I really had to zoom in. The color picker in the app allowed me to see the sometimes-unexpected colors that Van Huysum used. Sometimes a passage that I assumed was blue or purple was green, or colors that appeared muted had dashes of brilliance. It was a very useful lesson in color!
On my visits to the NGA, I would stand very close to the paintings. I would bend my knees a bit and look up at the surface of the painting in a “raking light”, so the reflection of the overhead lights revealed the thickness of the paint. I’d see the brushstrokes and the built up highlights. Nothing compares to seeing a painting in person, but there’s a lot to learn and enjoy digitally, as well. Wikimedia Commons offers some very high resolution images of artwork. A good thing in these quarantine times!