In this  project we had to choose a view onto the world from a window or doorway. It was recommend to do a research and first  look at works of Raoul Dufy, Gwen John, Edward Hopper.

Below are the artworks I liked in particular, from left to right:

Raoul Dufy “La Fenêtre du Peintre”, 1948, watercolours; Image via hprints.com;

Raoul Dufy “Interior with Open Window”, 1928, watercolours,

Gwen John, a corner of the Artist` s Room, Image via nationalmuseumwhales.com;

Edward Hopper “Chop Suey”, 1929, oil on canvas; image via edwardhopper.net;

Albert Marquet  “La Ventana en La Goulette”, image via curator.com;

I allow myself to write down some thoughts I have about these paintings. 

The artworks by Raoul Dufy give me a strong  feeling of certain unity of the interior space and the outer space  even though these are two different places. I see a lot of harmony of a man made space – the inside of the apartment and the nature of outside. May be this harmony is the secret  of his charming works. I noticed that Dufy actively outlined objects on his paintings such as window frames, furniture  ( the chair and the table) and the mountains and the buildings with black/dark heavy lines. This surprises me a lot because I thought that this kind of technique in painting is a taboo because one of my tutors sent me a feedback for my Drawing 1 course, platan trees which I outlined that “outlining doesn’t exist in nature and you should never do outline the objects”. 

I really like the style of Edward Hopper, who’s artworks I find as very elegant and enigmatic. I like his perfection in lines, therefore a sense of symmetry  and colours he created on his paintings along with very gentle approach to figures and faces so the viewer can feel the intimacy of the moment for people – the subjects on the painting.

Exercise: View from a window or doorway. Below are my drawings for this exercise where we were required to draw a view from inside of the house/any building.

I picked one’s  garden`s views which can be seen from the windows.

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Below is my drawing of the view above I had from the window I did using 2 different mediums: on the left I used my set of Japanese watercolours Gansai Tambi and on the right I used soft pastels by Sennelier. I personally prefer the watercolour works because that work came out more vivid, giving an impression of very fresh crispy green tropical garden while the garden was not tropical.

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Below is my another project for this exercise – another view from my window which i did using my set of coloured pencils by Derwent and a 90 gram drawing paper by Canson.

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