Mostly-Blind Study of 'Shipwreck in a Rocky Inlet' - Carlo Bonavia

Did something a little different today. In the vein of the Technical Challenge in the Great British Bake-Off, where the contestants are required to use their baking knowledge and instinct to replicate a bare-bones recipe, I decided to make a very quick study from a painting - in this case, Carlo Bonavia's 'Shipwreck in a Rocky Inlet'. From there I no longer looked at the original, instead relying on my early sketch and my painting knowse to highlight what I did and didn't know.

Shipwreck in a Rocky Inlet - Carlo Bonavia, 1757

My initial sketch, the only part of the painting that actually referenced the original. Observe the absenve of the ship - this continues the whole way through, because I was more interested in the overall landscape than the fiddly details of the ship.

 

Attempting to come to terms with that rock.

Ehhh... let's add 'rock' to the list of things I need to study.

Let's throw 'clouds' onto that list, too.

And my final, with distinctly absent shipwreck and a lighthouse that was definitely not there in the original. It needed something to be sitting there, and that whole side was dark, so a lighthouse seemed the obvious choice. Oh, and just for good measure, put 'water' on the list as well.

And here's the original again, for comparison's sake. Goddamn, did I lose track of it. Nevertheless, despite not having a technically brilliant outcome, I learnt a lot about what I don't know, which in some cases is far more important than actually learning something objectively useful.

Weeks 13-20 – Traditional Painting & CG 'Carceri' Mission Statement

What with the whole 'already done the Storytelling unit with relatively few emotional hangups' thing, I shan't be participating in it this time around. Instead, I'll be focusing on the personal artistic growth that should have happened over the summer but mysteriously didn't. I'll have two projects on the go, so I can procrastinate on one by working on the other.

The first is a lot of studying of traditional painting techniques; making studies from the masters and suchlike. Alan recommended the book 'Colour and Light' by James Gurney, so I'll be learning about the mechanics of painting as well as the technique. The areas of my skillset I'll be focusing particularly on are a) speed, b) value, c) colour theory, d) composition and e) markmaking, and that's mostly what I'll be 'assessing' myself on when this is over.

The second is a full CG environment of at least one of Giovanni Piranesi's Carceri d'Invenzione, or, Imaginary Prisons. I discovered them when researching prisons for my abortive Environment project, and immediately thought 'holy crud I have to build one of these'. The Carceri have already been built in CG, by one Gregoire Dupond, but his depiction of them is to perfectly recreate the etchings so that the environment itself appears to be etched. On the other hand, I intend to build a mostly realistic interpretation with minimal stylisation.


Dupond's continuous panorama tempts me to stitch several of the plates together to form a larger environment, but the final decision on that one will be made once I've more carefully considered my time. I shall endeavour to avoid referencing Dupond, however, as I want this to be a personal interpretation of Piranesi (that, and Dupond's camera work and sound design make me want to weep). This project is going to rely heavily on my ability to make highly accurate orthographs, and given that I've never made any before I'm going to have to learn very quickly indeed. As the Environment project did not reach fruition, I want this project to be the unifying of everything I've learnt over my time on the course, and to prepare me as much as possible for the commission in week 21.