Suggested Portrait Artist Exercise: Copying a Vermeer
 

For those artists who are working to perfect the depiction of a fully three dimensional form or to fine tune any of a number of other aspects in their work, here is an excellent exercise I would recommend:

[b]Copy Vermeer

Here's the monochrome version:

After you feel you have completely mastered the drawing, the range of values and the rendering of edges, tackle this in color:

Michele,

Do you have a suggestion for where painters might find a good quality reproduction, especially on-line?

Can you suggest a palette as well?

By doing a Google image search and choosing the ones with the largest image size I came up with several very nice online reproductions.

Here are a few links:

http://arthistory.westvalley.edu/ima...RL_EARRING.JPG

http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/v/vermeer/03b/22pearl.jpg

http://www.oir.ucf.edu/wm/paint/auth/vermeer/

For information on suggested colors, and plenty of other details about emulating Vermeer's technique, try this website:

http://howtopaintavermeer.fws1.com/

Goil 'Wit Da Poil
 

Hi Michele,

Here's my start on the grisaille version. I've been stuck in an awful situation in my day job, accompanied by one of those rotten artistic slumps, where you never get to do what you really want to do when you want to do it. I'm about five hours into this. It's a good exercise for when you want to keep painting or drawing, but things aren't going your way.

The size is 9"H x 8"W, oil on masonite, or about half-scale. I put down a background of raw umber in W&N alkyd Sunday night so it would be mostly dry when I started to work on it Monday. It's all titanium white, raw umber, and some ivory black, using Rembrandt oils without thinning or medium.

I'm using my paperback version of Norbert Schneider's "Vermeer: The Complete Paintings" as a source, since I couldn't get a good printout from the web.I've spent most of my time on the face; hardly even roughed out the clothing and turban. One thing that strikes me is that that earring doesn't appear to be a pearl. It paints more like a glass ball or globe. Am I nuts, or has anybody else noticed this? Vermeer sure knew how to paint a pearl, and it doesn't look like most of his other pearls to me. Anyway, any crits or comments are welcome. Maybe I should have spent tne time doing a brake job on my car?

Nice start, John. And, I do agree, the earring in Vermeer's painting doesn't much look like a pearl. It looks like a silver ball to me.

Here's a suggestion: perhaps those who do this exercise could use this thread to tell others what they are learning from the process.

Re: the pearl
 

It looks like a black pearl, a rather large one.

Jean

Reproduction
 

There are also quite large reproductions at the following link, although the color is not as saturated as in the other reproductions.

http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/v/vermeer/03b/index.html

Holly

Good start John
 

Hi John,

I must say - of all the copies of The Girl With The Pearl Earring I've seen - you have captured her mouth the best in this grisaille. Overall I think you have the gist of the pose pretty "down" also!