Gustav Klimt, Pre Production artist study....

For my first task of the Pre Production module me and my course mates were given artists and art movements to research and study at random. The artist that I was given was Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt. 

I first tried copying his use of symbols in his backgrounds using red and gold acrylic to mimic the rectangles used in his portrait painting 'Adele Bloch- Bauer 1'. As well as this I used gold, black and white acrylic to copy the rectangular patterned outfit of the man in his painting 'The Kiss'. After copying sections of some of his backgrounds I copied a section of his painting of Adele Bloch-Bauer using watercolour for the portrait and a combination of fine liners, acrylic and gel pens for the background. I think that I captured Klimt's style relatively well in this copy and conveyed his love of the colour gold. Although I think that the water colours could have been less saturated and more texture is needed in the background to truly get a sense of his style and create an almost material feel to the piece. This is shown in the second image below. 

The third image shows my artist imitation in which I painted a self portrait. To create this I used acrylic, watercolour and a combination of fine liners and felt tips. I am fairly happy with how my interpretation of Klimt's style turned out. Although again more texture is needed in the painting and the portrait itself needs a wider range of colour, perhaps some pink tones and more orange tones on the face. I tried to incorporate his use of a range of symbols in the background which I think work quite well.