Impressionist

2005

48’ x 54”

Brushstrokes: 44,943

Paul Kirby's Impressionist

French Impressionism and Pointillism, and animation techniques bring a new brushstroke for Dulcinea called “point” adding texture and color variation. The painting incorporates three passes of twenty-four different colors. Fractional Brownian motion is borrowed from animation to create texture and the colors in the painting which took two full days for Dulcinea to paint.

Impressionist yellow acrylic painting by Paul Kirby

Artistic Inspiration

The Pointillism inspiration came while viewing one of Monet’s winter haystack paintings at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The snow on the ground had a magical, painterly quality to it. The painting combines concepts from the French Impressionism and Pointillism, with procedural texturing techniques used in the animation industry.

Close-up of Impressionist by Paul Kirby

Technical Description

While walking through some Roman ruins in Italy, during an artists’ study trip, a fellow artist from the movie special-effect industry mentioned how the Perlin algorithm was often used to create textures, like mountain ranges or dinosaur skin. Fascinated by this idea, a Fractional Brownian Motion (fBm) algorithm created the pattern and points of color you see here.

Impressionist by Paul Kirby

Outcome

In order to achieve the desired artistic effect, the painting incorporates three passes of twenty-four different colors (six warm and six cool of yellow and purple). When viewed up-close a rich diversity of painterly texture and color is visible. The final painting took more than two days of continuous effort by Dulcinea.