Jan van Eyck

This was a portrait of a medieval European girl, probably painted by one of my favorite artists, Jan Van Eyck.

Curiously enough, she looks like a Japanese girl. I think this was the ideal type of girl for Europeans during his time because most of the portraits of women I've seen around this period had eyes like these. She is a pretty girl, probably was as young as fifteen.

Van Eyck was a Flemish painter, born during the late medieval period. What I really liked about his work is how he paints in a very detailed, meticulous manner. Well, for me, his technique approached that of a hyper-realist painter. I also liked his jewel-like colors, golden atmosphere, and how he styled the faces.

I tried to imitate his work through his technique known as imprimatura, only using acrylics. Well, I only heard about this technique from other people, but I tried it anyway when I was illustrating for some children's book contest. I realized that it was really a hard technique, but I enjoyed it though it took me two to three months to finish. Quite funny enough, I spent some nights looking at his work in a book I borrowed in our library. The book was a little bit old, but some pictures showed his work in actual size and was of good quality printing.








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Edited: April 13, 2009

Erratum

I stand corrected. The painting "Portrait of a Young Girl" was done by a follower of Van Eyck, Petrus Christus. I apologize for the inconveniences this caused. Thank you Dawn W. for pointing this out!