Month: May 2014

Did you ever notice this, when visiting a museum? Most people look at paintings from faraway. However, a single person is at a distance of a few centimeters to his eyes from a painting. Often this guy is warned by the museum guard: “Please back off.” This chap is definitely a painter himself. I know this because I do the same. I need to examine the painting technique: I want to see brushstrokes, feel the varnish, detect what kind of canvas the artist uses, at the borders sometimes some grounding is visible. I want to discover the secrets. Basically I am anxious to catch a glimpse of the Masters kitchen. People like me always stand in the way. We belong to that special breed among museum frequenters: the annoying visitor. For people like us it’s great that many museums have put some of the highlights from their collection in high resolution on the internet. For example, have a look at this link of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

In response to my blogpost dated 1 May of this year I received the following comment:

Hello Ben

A beautiful portrait, but I do not understand the remark about the red face and green background.  I would think that the effect is thereby enhanced. Greetings”

 Yvonne Welman

This observation is of course correct. Indeed, the green enhances the reddish effect. Green against red is a complementary contrast. Well, I have altered the background of the original painting in photoshop. In this changed version red is now the dominant colour overall. The whole painting is thus getting a huge saturation of the red tones. I did not want that. That is what I meant when I wrote “To minimize the impact of the reddish face I surrounded it with a greenish background.” (By all means, in the original painting, I had already introduced some red accents in the background, as an echo of the reddish flesh tones, at the left of the face.)