Girl Reading A Letter At An Open Window

Course Title: Paint Like Vermeer: Girl Reading A Letter At An Open Window

Reproducing a Vermeer is challenging and rewarding. To begin, create a detailed sketch in oil paint to lay the groundwork for the grisaille stage. During the grisaille stage, strive for precision by making several passes to capture Vermeer’s intricate attention to detail. Progress to the blocking and glazing phase to acquire valuable techniques to enhance your skills. The final stage involves adding intricate details to breathe life into ‘Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window’ and elevate it as a valuable masterpiece in your collection.

Restored Original Girl Reading Letter At An Open Window

“Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window” was initially painted by Vermeer and has undergone restoration.

Recommended Prerequisites:

Creating working Images in Photoshop

How To Paint With A Limited Palette Like A Pro

Get Accurate Colors With The Color Checker!.

Build a Color Checker for under $10.00.

Material List

Materials List for Oil Painting Reproduction:

The canvas has been coated with gesso, rotating horizontally and vertically, and sanded smoothly between each coat. As a result, I painted the canvas about ten times to create a smooth working surface supporting this reproduction type.

Clickable links will take you to Amazon, where they were purchased for reproduction.

Tools:

• Proportional Divider
• Color Checker
• Glass Palette
• Palette Knife
• Ruler
• Red or Black Pastel pencil for gridlines

Canvas For Reproduction:

18″ W X 24″ H prepared canvas

Oil Paints:

All reproductions use a minimal pallet of six colors:

• Cadmium Yellow
• French Ultramarine
• Burnt Umber
• Titanium White
• Vermillion Hue
• Ivory Black

Glazing Mixture:

• Pure Refined Linseed Oil for mixing and thinning
• Windsor Newton Glazing and Blending Medium for glazing and thinning for details

Sketching With Paint:

Gamblin Gamsol is a solvent artists use to clean their brushes and thin down brown paint for the initial sketch on canvas. Remember not to use Gamsol or any other cleaning solvent for anything other than sketching. For example, George Werbacher uses brown paint thinned with Gamsol when needed for the initial oil painting sketch. In addition, George uses linseed oil only when prepping oil paints for use in all his reproductions and originals

Demonstration Videos: