matt harvey art

I don’t want to seem like I’m making any grand claims but I hope to show in a new video what for me is something like the process of glazing that Caravaggio used. I’m coming to this based on trial and error. How nice it would be to travel back in time to watch him at work! But from looking carefully at his paintings and having a go myself I think this may be fairly close to it. I thought I had lost the video but it turned up in an imovie folder I made! It looks as rough as it does because of time limitations on the videos I make, but I think you can see how you would proceed and continue to refine the modelling, chroma etc. with a bit more work. Its all on my Patreon page but you can see the first installment on youtube.

The palette for the skin tones is mainly:

Titanium White
Vermillion
Yellow Ochre

And also:
Burnt and Raw Umber
Black – I use Ivory Black and I’m personally not fussed which black you use.

I had a lot of fun doing this copy. Please let me know what you think about it. In hindsight the colours are quite light but I’m just getting used to this process. Also its useful not to commit too much in the beginning and deepen the colours as you go. I will work into them in the next glaze as I did in the Rubens copy.

The point is I feel I have come closer to seeing how Caravaggio achieved his painterly effects, and learned more about his process. I hope I have learned through this example how it is possible to paint using a similar process to Caravaggio.

Happy painting! Matt

I have painted a number of these over the years but haven’t shown any until now. I thought this one worked well with the glazing process.

I obviously stuck closely to the photo reference I was sent, and I painted the face using a Raw Umber and Titanium White underpainting, or grisaille and then followed this with glazes and halfpastes of Titanium White, Cadmium Red, Alizarin Crimson, Yellow Ochre, Brilliant Yellow, Burnt Umber and Ivory Black

I felt it demonstrates the glazing process as you can see how the glazes went on to the surface and some brushstrokes are still visible. I like the way you can conjure details, like the teeth, with just a few strokes of the brush. I always like to have a ‘truth to materials’ approach to painting, where as well as depicting something real you are aware that it is an illusion, and just paint on the surface.

I feel I have finally found a way to bring all the elements of my practice together at the same time and from now will be embarking on a new series of work in pen. As a sculptor by training I have always love drawing first and foremost and specifically drawing from the figure. Figure drawing in itself is more like a technical exercise for me and so for inspiration I have looked to dance in various forms.

I have also made a lot of abstract (strictly non-figurative) work in the past and investigated making some large images with pen over 10 years ago. I like the way I can build up colour and tone in an image by repeated scribbling, creating richer and deeper colours the more I work. The image comes into focus slowly, the line is built up by many other smaller lines. To me this parallels the process of stone carving which I suppose is my first love in art. I also like the fact that wherever you look the process is revealed and is exactly the same: single lines of pen that interweave in a tapestry of lines. But I’ll share more of what I think about this in further posts.

This is the first of a number of Velazquez paintings I would like to try and copy. You can see the video in real time on my patreon channel, see the link here on my website.
I was interested in what palette he used and also in his use of the imprimatura and how that was left for some of the middle tones and her clothes.
He may have painted this in 1 or 2 sittings and I show that it is possible to achieve it in 1 sitting, although how he did it in a single sitting with such breathtaking technique is anybody’s guess.
The point of the video is to gain an understanding of the technique so that I or anybody else will be able to use it in their own paintings. There are a number of things that I feel could be worked on a little more but due to the fact I was filming it I stopped working here after 1hr 10 minutes. The technique comes with practice and I think something anyone can do, but of course I mean A LOT of practice. Personally it was very enlightening to make this copy. One thing I did struggle with was not being able to see it all properly, for example the area around her left eye is very dark and difficult to make out. Because of this I think I’ll leave it here, because I don’t know how I can improve it so that it looks more like the original.

I love Velazquez because I think he was a great human being as well as a great artist, as well as being obsessed by status! When he painted various ‘outsiders’ like his bonded slave (who’s freedom he later bought) or peasants, or the jesters and dwarves in the royal court, obviously some would have been the result of royal patronage as well as his own interest. But he painted these people with what I would describe as empathy because he still respected them for their humanity. I wonder about the girl in this portrait, and differences in their ‘status’ notwithstanding, Velazquez does paint her with a sensitivity and tenderness that make this an outstanding portrait painting. She is not sentimentalised like Bouguereau would have painted her, and you can see in this portrait a precursor to Manet’s modernist portraits of people in his everyday world. For this project my main interest is the technique he used, but I still find this a touching portrait that also demonstrates Velazquez’s profound empathy.

The colours I used, and I am pretty sure Velazquez also used, were:
Titanium White
Ivory Black
Burnt Umber
Vermilion
Yellow Ochre

Of course mine are modern equivalents