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Figurative Paintings Mastercopies

Mastercopying Caravaggio at the Met – Week 7

With only 2 days left in the copyist program, today is the day to make any major changes. There are still a lot more to do, but I decided to prioritize my attention to the Woman and Peter.

Matching Colors when master copying at the Met was one of main challenge. For those of you taking on mastercopying at museums in the future, here is my advise: Try matching colors near the original—the lights hitting your canvas might be completely different than the one on the original. I only came to realize this when lights abruptly changed in week 5. Fact: The new lighting in much of the European Wing at the Met has been completely redone during the pandemic.

In today’s session, I mixed up a few major color tones in front of the original, and painted with those colors instead of the colors that I actually see on my canvas. Result was warming up of skin tones. I pushed this as far as I can take it. After that, I had to rework Peter’s hands and other areas that needed at least one final layer of paint.

Mastercopying the Denial of Saint Peter after session #7

Then it was time to go after carefully measuring and making the best use of 3 hours.

And, in preparation for the final session, I painted a small head study from another painting by Caravaggio…