How to Paint Your Own Vermeer
Johannes or Jan Vermeer was a Dutch artist working in the Baroque period of the Dutch Golden Age of painting during the late 1600s. He was a master at depicting the effects of light in his oil paintings. Along with Rembrandt, Vermeer epitomized the naturalistic style of the painters from the Netherlands. Vermeer and the Dutch painters developed techniques to achieve a level of realism superseded only by the Photorealist painters of the 1970s. The methods of traditional Dutch painting are easily learned by anyone.
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Things You'll Need
- Stretched canvas
- Rabbit skin glue
- Sandpaper
- Palette knife
- Oil paints
- Paint brushes
- Mixing palette
- Linseed oil
- Turpentine
Instructions
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Prepare a nearly square-shaped canvas on wooden stretchers. Heat up some rabbit-skin glue crystals to fluidity. Spread the warm liquid on the canvas with a palette knife. Push it deep into the weave. Sand until you have a smooth surface. Apply a monochromatic layer of paint thinned with linseed oil or turpentine over the entire canvas. Use a high-keyed or light colored earth tone. Spread another thin wash of neutral grayish white over the first ground layer. Use these imprimatura coats of paint to unify and harmonize the final colors of your painting.
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Study Vermeer's paintings and copy a specific one or compose one of your own in his style. Draw your composition onto the canvas in a highly detailed manner using correct, tightly controlled perspective as Vermeer would have done. Compose an interior scene with figures and a still life. Establish the angle of the light source in your drawing and keep it consistent throughout the painting for the proper placing of shadows.
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Follow the outlines of your drawing to create a monochromatic underpainting or grisaille. Set up your tonal relationships and establish the painting's value structure using grayish-shaded off-white paint. Block in the major forms and color areas with wide, flat brushes. Give volume and substance to your forms using darks and lights to suggest chiaroscuro or the effects of light and shadow.
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Work on the painting one area at a time in a procedure the Dutch called "working up." Carefully delineate the contours of your figures with small, flexible, long-bristled brushes. Arrange bright primary colors of red, yellow and blue for a consistent color scheme. Paint with opaque colors in your working up stage. Use greenish tints for undertones when rendering human skin. Blend your colors evenly with a wide fan-shaped brush.
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Build your colors up with thin layers of transparent paint called glazes. Mix up a puddle of pure pigment on your palette and brush it onto the canvas with animal-hair brushes. Layer the coats of paint one over another until you get a luminous three-dimensional look. Choose your individual glaze colors while keeping your overall color scheme in mind. Finish up the painting by adding tiny, light-colored dots of paint to represent the accented highlights.
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Tips & Warnings
Let the layers of paint thoroughly dry before over-painting.
Leave the painting unsigned as Vermeer would have done. He signed only three paintings.
Don't boil the rabbit skin glue, it'll crack later.
References
Resources
- Photo Credit Jupiterimages/Brand X Pictures/Getty Images
