Learning from the Masters: Painting like Edward Hopper in Procreate

Learning from the Masters: Painting like Edward Hopper in Procreate

Buy Beach Dudes on RedBubble: https://rdbl.co/2OngFMG

In the summer I went to the beach a few days to study the behaviour of people. It was one of the hottest days. I also studied the harsh sun and what kind of effect it had on objects and bodies. For the museum exhibition I had to paint a panorama filled with people. The best way to study is to go out and experience it.

This painting is called Beach Dudes and is available as a print on my RedBubble page. I will leave a link in the description box down below. I got my inspiration from the master painter Edward Hopper.

Edward Hopper was an American painter who is most known for this painting. Night Hawks.
He painted it in 1942. I saw it in The Art Institute of Chicago. It is not this painting that inspired me to make my own painting. During the summer Edward Hopper spent most of his time in Cape Cod in the oceanside village of Truro. He painted the surroundings and also this painting: Groundswell.
I saw this painting a few years back when I was visiting a friend in San Diego. He had a poster on his wall. I was immediately intrigued by the composition and the strong shadows cast by the sun. When you look closer, you see that the shadows on the back of this man is very graphic. That is because the sun hits the sun on the left side. It is a very direct light, creating a strong harsh shadow.

How do you capture the heat of the sun? I made numerous sketches and studied how the sun reflects on objects and what the shadows look like. At the beach you have different sources of light. The main light of course comes from the sun. But there is also reflective light. On the beach you have the sands that is a light surface that reflects the light upwards. Why is the sky blue? A question that children ask a lot. The answer is very simple. Earth is covered for two third with water. That is a lot of blue surface. When the sun hits the oceans and seas it is reflected in the sky. Making it blue. When you are at the beach, there is a lot of blue reflection, from the sky and the sea. This painting I painted at Zandvoort Beach at the boulevard. For my research I took a lot of pictures with my iPhone. I did that very discretely. For obvious reasons. The other reason is to capture a moment of realness. When people notice they are filmed or photographed they start to pose and all the natural gestures disappear. I always look for stolen moments, that people are themselves. It is there where you find true beauty. In this painting I tried to capture that. Three guys, sitting on a bench, overlooking the sea. They just are just about to skate. The guy on the left is repairing a skate for one of the other guys. The second guy is looking at his phone while talking to the third guy. The third guys is sitting on the railing of the boulevard and has his feet on the bench. He is smoking a cigarette. On the floor you see the shoes they just pulled off and some energy drinks.

Realism
My first approach was to just make a study. I needed to find out, how the sun hits objects, what happens to the colors and what kind of shadows are created? I also needed to find a way to paint people in a realistic way. Edward Hopper is not the only inspiration for the paintings I have done so far. With each painting I want to learn something new. I never thought I could paint like this for the longest time. Sometimes you just have to set yourself some goals and reach and go where you have never gone before. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Photo Reference
What I discovered is that a lot of visual developers and illustrators use photo reference to achieve a realistic effect. I always avoided using a lot of photo reference, because I thought it was cheating. But drawing from real live is really complex and some things you just can’t paint from memory. Textures of clothing, stone, water, skies, all have their own particular way of rendering to make it believable. Without reference you will just stick to random cliches. So to get better as an artist you need to draw from real life, or use photos. Nowadays you just have no excuse not to use photo reference. It is available on the internet and you can easily take your own reference photos with your smartphone or your iPad.


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