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Monet Painting: A Step-by-Step Demonstration of Painting Monet's Bridge

From Karen Day-Vath

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Inspiration from Monet's Garden at Giverny
Claude Monet's Garden At Giverny

The Inspiration: a reference photo of Monet's garden at Giverny

Image: © 2006 Marion Boddy-Evans. Licensed to About.com, Inc.

There are a lot of artists that I like, but the Impressionists are it for me. I love them all, and my two favorites are Monet and Van Gogh. I consider myself more or less of an eclectic artist, I paint mainly abstract (see my abstract demo), but enjoy painting florals, landscapes, and other things as well. I have painted a reproduction of Monet’s The Artist Garden and Van Gogh’s Café, which I enjoyed tremendously and found extremely challenging.

When I came across the reference photos that Marion had taken on her visit to Monet’s Gardens at Giverny, I was mesmerized. Here was the opportunity to paint from a reference photo instead of an actual copy of one of Monet’s paintings. I chose Monet’s Bridge, I had always loved his painting of it so I thought I’d try to do my own version of it. Then I decided I didn’t really want to copy it, I wanted to make it my own.

I have always painted in water soluble oils, recently I started painting with acrylics, so I thought this to be a good challenge along with the painting. In this step-by-step demonstration you can follow the development of my painting from start to finish. Let's get started...

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