Seeing artwork that blows your mind away is a wonderful experience, even for those who don’t consider themselves aficionados or experts. Here, we feature an artist whose fingerpainting art can be considered a masterpiece.
Finger painting is something that most people remember fondly as one of their first experiences with artistic expression. As a child, you may have felt pure joy smearing different shades of paint onto the canvas to create a unique piece of work.
There’s nothing quite like seeing the finished masterpiece displayed in the classroom window for everybody to see!
While finger painting is fun and messy, it is more than just child’s play. It can also produce some seriously stunning results with more advanced techniques.
One artist who took finger painting to the next level is Chuck Close, who used a more refined and creative technique to portray his late grandmother in law.
Source: NGA
A Refined Fingerpainting Technique
What looks like a charcoal or pencil drawing is actually thousands of fingerprints pressed onto canvas to create this stunning, lifelike portrait.
The oil on canvas work was conceptualized and created in 1985 as the artist developed the masterful technique of pressing pigment onto the canvas with varying amounts of pressure. By doing so, he could create shadows and highlights to form the contours and crevices in the face and hair.
Source: My Modern Met
Close typically worked using a black and white photograph divided into a grid. He would then transpose the grid onto a much larger space to reproduce each section methodically and meticulously.
The result is an unexpected and uncomfortable intimacy as the viewer looks at the portrait produced in great detail.
Below you can see close-up shots of the subject’s face. The varying fingerprint pressure points and gradients are clearly seen in the artwork’s section depicting the lips.
Source: My Modern Met
Source: Flickr
More Fingerpainting Art and Artists
While Chuck Close’s work is one of the most impressive uses of this technique, he is not the only artist who has made a name for themselves with finger painting.
Artist Judith Ann Braun utilizes the same method to create murals in a unique style.
Source: Brighton Blog
While Chuck Close specialized in hyperrealistic paintings with different mediums, Braun creates landscape and abstract patterns using her fingers coated in charcoal dust.
Source: Bored Panda
Braun’s masterpieces, which often showcase beautiful symmetrical patterns, are achieved by using both hands simultaneously. This reflects the body’s inherent symmetry.
The artist stretches both arms out as far as they can reach to create a gestural vocabulary of art. Here are some more of her pieces below. While vastly different from Close’s approach, their works are equally stunning in their own way.
Source: All That’s Interesting
Source: All That’s Interesting
If you liked Close’s and Braun’s unique fingerprinting artwork styles, then stay tuned for our upcoming features of remarkable artwork in future posts! Also, you could check out his gallery of hyperrealistic artworks.
