Hey there everyone, it's update time!

I'm a bit sad to say that today marks the end of spring break for me, so I won't have as much time this week to work on my art as I did the week prior. I'm still going to do as much as I can to practice and learn though! I expect things to be a lot looser in style than what I've just recently completed. To this end I chose one artist to work from that I felt I could emulate relatively quickly, and that would still teach me a great deal. Here's the first painting I used as reference.

Georges Seurat - "The Riverside"

That's right, this week is going to be all about the work of Georges Seurat. You might recognize this image, it's probably one of his more famous works. I remember my dentist growing up had that painting hanging on the wall in the room I always got my teeth cleaned in, funny how something like that would come up again! Anyway, let's talk about the image at hand. I really like how simple this piece is, it looks like a snapshot he took with his mind and then put on a canvas (although I would assume this would have been painted en plein air). It's got some nice dark bits around the edges that make your eye focus in the center, and there's a good positioning of the horizon in the piece so you get a doubling effect of the sky in the water. So, let's see how I did!

I really like how this one came out. The only trouble I had was getting the brush stroke effect to read correctly. It takes a certain finesse to make digital painting look, well, not digital. Luckily I made some brushes a while back that fit the bill perfectly for what I needed here, so I used them! If you ever need a set of cool and unique custom brushes just grab a canvas, some black paint, and a pallet knife. Lay down a couple interesting strokes from the pallet knife when it's loaded up with paint on your canvas, then photograph from directly above. Find a tutorial on the web about making custom brushes if you don't know how to do it already, and just use those images as your source material. They'll come out awesome, I promise. Back to the painting at hand, overall, I like it. There are a few areas that could be improved, such as the trees on the left of the image across the water, but that's not too much of a big deal.

That's all for today, look forward to another Seurat study tomorrow, have a good night!