Today was dedicated to painting the soldier’s helmet.
My initial plan for copying this painting by Caravaggio–just so you know–didn’t include the soldier. I had planned on painting the woman and Peter. But when I stood in front of the painting with a blank canvas, I decided to copy the entire painting.
What I didn’t realize at the time was the effort that I had to put into painting the helmet. Unlike other items in the painting, the helmet includes insane depth to it. I am convinced that the painting wouldn’t look complete–I am only referring to visually aspect of the painting here–without the helmet.
To develop the deep colors of the helmet, I had to work up to it using layers of paint, which I had built up over the course of several weeks. Caravaggio executed the details of helmet with the bare minimum essential brush strokes and colors.
After about 3 hours of continuous painting, I was satisfied with the outcome. Like it or not, I will have to move onto completing the painting after today’s session.
- Met Copyist Program – Week 1
- Copying Caravaggio – Week 2
- Painting at the Metropolitan Museum – Week 3
- Mastercopy: Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio – Week 4
- The Met: Gallery 601 – Week 5
- Painting the soldier’s helmet – Week 6
- Mastercopying Caravaggio at the Met – Week 7
- The Denial of Saint Peter: Woman, Life, Freedom – Week 8
- A Master Copy – Diego Velázquez- Done for now
- The Denial of Saint Peter (La Negazione di Pietro) is a painting finished around 1610 – Read More From Wikipedia