Title: Tired Eyes
Size: 24 x 12 inches Medium: Acrylic on Canvas Completion date: November 2023 Exhibition Text: This work showcases a direct look into the eyes of someone who is overworked and overwhelmed. It was directly inspired by the bold expressions and glimpses into personal emotions of Gustave Courbet. As an individual who regularly experiences stress and anxiety, it can be comforting to see that this is a common experience, so much so that multiple artist go through it and even take inspiration from those artist because of the shared emotions and pains. This can even directly influence the style of the painting and the techniques used, much like this painting here. |
Inspiration
My inspiration for this piece started when I was working on my last project. I was overwhelmed and tired, and work kept piling up, which stressed me out even more. Once I realized how I felt, I decided that I would make my next piece about it to show that people aren't alone in this feeling. This realization can help others grow and find a support system to address their feelings and difficulties. This is what I used a base for finding my inspiration. I wanted to search for an artist who had felt overwhelmed and been overworked to the point of burnout. This is when I found Gustave Courbet, an artist who primarily painted realism pieces with bizarre expressions. The first thing that initially drew me to his art were those expressions that made the eyes stand out like they were the only thing that mattered in the piece. From there, the deciding factor turned out to be his experiences, as I had previously stated. |
The Man Made Mad with Fear by Gustave Courbet
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The Desperate Man by Gustave Courbet
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The painting that draws most eyes, including my own, to Courbet's work was the piece that I took the most inspiration from. It was what initially caught my attention, and I became even more determined to use it as my inspiration the more I looked at it. There are various elements in this piece that draws the eyes through the piece, one of the most noticeable elements being the triangle shape made by Courbet's arms to bring the eyes all around the piece. This is done by many different artists to give a piece movement and make it more interesting for those viewing it. In addition to the, Courbet also used bold lighting, to make the piece more interesting. This is primarily seen in the folds of the shirt as well as in the shading of the face.
By using these various techniques, the Courbet is able to convey different emotions depending on the painting. In this case, it shows desperation and stress, but it also shows the anxiety that I was looking to show in my own work. In addition to this, his pieces also tend to romanticize these emotions, making them look more elegant and unique. This was the one thing I wasn't striving to apply to my work, as it makes it significantly harder for someone to relate to the piece. Anxiety isn't and elegant emotions and stress doesn't look beautiful. If that's what people think their emotions are supposed to look, then they'll only feel worse.
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Planning & Experimentation
I had already had an initial idea of what I wanted when I started planning this project, but I was able to refine my ideas when I decided to use Gustave Courbet as my inspiration. By choosing Courbet as my artist for this piece, I had finally given myself inspiration for my theme. From the start, I wanted to paint a pair of eyes by I had several ideas of what I wanted to do with them. I didn't know if I wanted to include any words in the piece, if I wanted to include more of the face, or whether or not I wanted to include more of the eyebrows to make the piece slightly more expressive.
I started my sketches with a general sketch of my eyes, doing my best to include all of the shading that I would end up including in my painting. I decided that I wasn't going to include my eyebrows in the sketch since I didn't know what expression I wanted to include. Overall, I just wanted to get a general idea of the shape that I wanted and whether or not I wanted to hand draw the eyes onto my canvas. In the end, I decided that I could hand draw the eyes, but since I was already running low on time, I would just go with projecting it so I could get straight to painting later on in the same school day.
The next thing I went on to do was to a small sketch of my main painting of inspiration, just to get a rough understanding of how Courbet shades as well as how deep his values are. This was the benefit of using pencil for this sketch, by removing the colors, I was able to get an understanding of how deep and dark his colors actually are. It also made me more comfortable with the darker shading I would end up having to do with my painting. This is a practice I've started to really get into a bit more as of late, as it makes me more comfortable with the style, and it helps me understand the general composition the artist prefers to use.
Once I did all of the basic sketches, I had to finally confront the fact that I didn't actually know where I wanted to take it from there. My initial idea was to paint the eyes, but once I finished with that, I would include words in the eyes that related to feeling overworked. I really liked this idea, but I decided it strayed too far from my inspiration and moved on to new ideas. I do still like the idea, and may keep it in the back of my mind for a future project.
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From there, I began thinking about what I wanted the expression to be for the eyes. I knew it had to be something that was very vivid, to go along with Courbet's typical self portraits. I wasn't too worried about how difficult it would be to make an obvious expression because of how expressive eyes are all on their own, but I still wanted to make the emotions behind them clear. I was considering a lot of different emotions, but the main emotions that I was considering were:
With my sketches, I noticed that I ended up losing the general composition and shapes that Courbet used to add movement and draw the eyes, but I wasn't too concerned since the central focus was very clear and took up the entire piece. There wasn't much I needed to do to add movement since I couldn't really change the shape of my eyes just to make my piece similar to my inspiration, it would take away my connection. The only thing that I could've done, which I realized far too late, was to use the eyebrows and expressions to cause movement and carry the eyes around the piece.
By the time I was done with my sketches, I had pretty much decided to paint a more neutral but still vivid stare. I wasn't really happy with many of the photos I took to prepare for the painting accept one with the expression that I chose to go with in the end, which was another reason I chose it. The only real issue with the expression was that in the photo it's extremely difficult to see the tears, which led it to mean something different. This also transferred to the painting itself, but I decided to go with it, since it still worked, and it seemed to be a little more similar to the inspiration than the original idea.
Process
As always, I began my project with a few planning sketches, this was to decide on a final idea for the painting itself. As stated before, I roughly knew what I wanted to do, but it needed a lot of refinement. The overall idea was to show a feeling of stress and anxiety through a pair of eyes, but I didn't know how subtle I wanted the idea to be, or how I wanted to execute it using my inspirations style a little more. I didn't fully know what expression I wanted to do, so I went through a few different ideas on different emotions that could be shown that relate to anxiety, but I knew that I didn't want to romanticize the idea, or it would be considerably harder for someone to relate to the piece and feel comforted.
In the sketches, I also did a drawing of the main painting I'm taking inspiration from to get a better understanding of Courbet's style and the methods and elements he uses in he works. By doing this I got more comfortable with the strong shading as well as widened eyes. While the shading in my piece may not be as strong as Courbet's, I was able to do more than I likely would have without the small sketch of Courbet's work.
Once I finally finished all of my sketching, I decided on an expression. It wasn't quite as noticeable as I had hoped, but it still showed emotion, which was the main goal anyway. I decided on a stressed and anxious expression, and even though there were meant to be tears, they just weren't noticeable enough to fully include, which meant that it looked a little less pained than I would've liked, but it still worked.
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Next, I used a photo I had taken of my eyes and projected it onto my canvas. Luckily, I didn't need to stretch my canvas or Gesso it, since it was an old canvas that a student who left didn't need. This meant that I was able to go straight into projecting once I was done with my planning sketches. In order to project, I needed to get out a computer that stays locked in the classroom and connects to the projectors that also stay in the room. From there, all I had to do was plus the projector into the computer, and pull up my photo. Once the photo was ready, I just put my canvas on an easel and lined it up for the projection to fit.
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After getting the sketch onto my canvas, I was able to start painting, which I did just a few hours later. I started with the mid-tone in the piece, but it ended up being a shade too dark and a little too red, so I ended up having to paint over it. This definitely added to the time it took to complete the painting, but it I left it the shade I started with, the painting would look completely different. While painting, I loosely avoided any of the areas that were different colors to make things easier for myself later on when I needed to tell where certain colors would need to go.
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Luckily, I was able to fix the skin tone for the most part, then worked on the shading of the face. This time, I was able to get the color pretty quickly, and filled in the large spaces, blending out as I went. This was what I saw as the most important part, since it was what drew the viewer's eyes to the eyes in the painting I took inspiration from by Courbet.
Once I finally got the shading and highlighting done, I was able to move on to the eyes and get some of the darkest values down. While doing this, I completely ruined my own bay by realizing that I got some of those dark colors on the skin and would have to fix them with the very little amount of paint that I had let for the skin. To calm myself down, I lit and incredible candle that smells like Christmas. Thankfully, I was able to fix it for the most part, but if looking for it, one would be able to tell there was a mistake pretty quickly.
By the time I finished calming down and fixing my mistake, I had to start working on the eyebrows. By this time, it was quite late, so I got them done quick and moved on to the final portion of the painting. The small highlights, which were actually tears, but the photo didn't capture them well enough. I did still decide to keep them, though, because it still added to the piece, and I thought it made it look a little shinier. Once I got all the shines painted, I was done and could finally sleep!
Critique
Original Work
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Although the piece I made was inspired by Gustave Courbet's, The Desperate Man, there are several clear distinctions between the works and the elements that impact their style. Courbet's piece is much warmer and has more movement. The aforementioned movement is shown with the placement of the arms to create a rough triangle for the eyes to look all around to piece. In addition to this, he also uses much darker colors for shading, and there isn't much open space as it's all being taken up by the subject. In contrast to this, my piece has a considerable amount of open space, as the only real subject of the piece is the set of eyes, leaving the skin as blank space. The dark tones in the piece inspired by Courbet's work are also considerably lighter, despite various efforts to get more comfortable with darker shades.
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The Desperate Man by Gustave Courbet
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There are, however, many similarities as well, these can be seen when viewing the style as well as the texture of the pieces. Both pieces are of the style, realism, and has a softer texture, which comes as a result of the colors being blended and being similar values. Furthermore, the use of lines is similar, where the harsher colors has sharper and more noticeable lines. In conclusion, while there are many similarities, there are more differences. This highlights just how much could be done to strengthen and improve the connection between the two works.
Reflection
Before working on this piece, I had never really made vary detailed eyes, but while working on this painting, I was able to pay more attention to the details in different eyes, and how the irises look. It is now as a result of this project that I am able make one of the most defining features on a person with some paint. This works very well with my inspiration, as the eyes are what stand out the most. Many of Courbet's pieces are self portraits that showcase bold emotions, much like the piece I made. I did, however, have a few troubles with the piece. Whenever I ran out of paint I would need to mix more, which I would find very difficult to make into the same shade repeatedly. This can be Sean with the skin tone, which looks slightly patchy because of this struggle. This came to be my least favorite part of the project, however, I also had a very specific part of the process that I enjoyed with this piece. I loved working on irises. It was something that I hadn't really done before, which meant that I got to learn a few new techniques, which I always love to do. In the end, I know that everyone will see the work differently depending on their own experiences, but I hope they can also see the stress that they've felt in their life, and how they chose to express it. It's important that they know that they are not a alone in those feelings, and I would like them to know that.
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Original Work
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ACT Questions
Clearly explain how you are able to identify the cause effect relationship between your inspiration and its effect on your artwork?
- By using Gustave Courbet as my inspiration, my work become more geared towards realism, where if I hadn't I was more likely to go towards a more surrealist approach. I also wouldn't have chosen the expression I did in this piece without Courbet as my artist.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
- While Courbet would occasionally paint similar emotions, he tended to idealize it a bit more than he should've. While he may have felt these emotions, his painting were more to show others himself and to show the elegance of the emotions, rather than to show that they were relatable feelings.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
- I discovered that at the time, many people enjoyed Courbet's art, but they preferred specific things which led to him having to paint to please instead of for himself. This was all because people just came to the conclusion that he would enjoy painting for them.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
- The central idea for this piece was anxiety and stress, but while looking for inspiration I was searching for bold expressions.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
- Overall, I had to make some pretty strong inferences about Courbet's mental state when he was making many of his works. While it may portray certain emotions, most of the time there wasn't any proof that he was feeling what he was showing.
- By using Gustave Courbet as my inspiration, my work become more geared towards realism, where if I hadn't I was more likely to go towards a more surrealist approach. I also wouldn't have chosen the expression I did in this piece without Courbet as my artist.
What is the overall approach the author has regarding the topic of your inspiration?
- While Courbet would occasionally paint similar emotions, he tended to idealize it a bit more than he should've. While he may have felt these emotions, his painting were more to show others himself and to show the elegance of the emotions, rather than to show that they were relatable feelings.
What kind of generalizations and conclusions have you discovered about people, ideas, culture, etc. while you researched your inspiration?
- I discovered that at the time, many people enjoyed Courbet's art, but they preferred specific things which led to him having to paint to please instead of for himself. This was all because people just came to the conclusion that he would enjoy painting for them.
What is the central idea or theme around your inspirational research?.
- The central idea for this piece was anxiety and stress, but while looking for inspiration I was searching for bold expressions.
What kind of inferences did you make while reading your research?
- Overall, I had to make some pretty strong inferences about Courbet's mental state when he was making many of his works. While it may portray certain emotions, most of the time there wasn't any proof that he was feeling what he was showing.
Citaions
- Fiore, Julia. “Probing Gustave Courbet’s Inner Thoughts in ‘The Desperate Man.’” Artsy, 20 Nov. 2018, www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-probing-gustave-courbets-inner-thoughts-the-desperate-man. Accessed 30 Nov. 2023.
- “Gustave Courbet.” National Gallery of Art, 2023, www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.1174.html. Accessed 30 Nov. 2023.
- Gustave Courbet - the Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2008/gustave-courbet/photo-gallery.
- “The Man Made Mad With Fear.” Obelisk Art History, www.arthistoryproject.com/artists/gustave-courbet/the-man-made-mad-with-fear.
- “Gustave Courbet.” National Gallery of Art, 2023, www.nga.gov/collection/artist-info.1174.html. Accessed 30 Nov. 2023.
- Gustave Courbet - the Metropolitan Museum of Art. www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2008/gustave-courbet/photo-gallery.
- “The Man Made Mad With Fear.” Obelisk Art History, www.arthistoryproject.com/artists/gustave-courbet/the-man-made-mad-with-fear.