Vittorio Reggianini s The Letter Podcast 196

Hello and welcome to Colin Bradley Artcast. I'm Stephen Bradley. And I'm Colin Bradley. Welcome everyone to this special introduction episode. As with every new demonstration that we reveal, we're going to record a special edition of the podcast, introducing you to the subject, telling you a bit about it. And this one is no different. It went down very well with the Constable. So we're doing it for the next one, which we're really pleased to finally announce is Vittorio? Vittorio Regginini. Yes. Took us a while to get to say that name, didn't it? But we got there. This is an incredible picture. So let's kick off. The first question is, why did you choose this one as a demonstration? This picture? Right. Well, he's prolific. If you go onto the internet and bring the images up, you'll see there are how we got time to do the more. I don't know. There's so many. And they're so detailed, Stephen. There's a lot to them. What I wanted to do was to minimize the amount of content because, you know, the problem, otherwise it would take forever. First of all, to demonstrate and to do much as I would have loved to have done it. It didn't seem very practical. So I look through and it's mostly beautiful women, I've got to say. And there are a few men scattered about, but mostly it's women. And I thought, well, if what I really want to do is combine this with the portrait techniques as well as the dresses, the satin dresses, which is lovely. And the decor was spectacular. Very much of a period. Oh, yeah. And the interesting thing is it's all 18th century designs, but he was born in the late Victorian era. It was weird. So he's doing what I'm doing the other way around. I like, you know, I like going back to the Victorian era, you know, 100 plus years ago. Well, he went 100 plus years ago when he was doing it. It was quite amazing how. And we've got all the photographic reference, you know, in the Victorian times, but he didn't have that. So where he got it from, I don't know. Anyway, he was a very clever man and his pictures were exquisite. They are very popular. They sell throughout the auction houses, big auction houses in the world. And they sell for a lot of money. And you can understand it, too. So this was the this was the idea. Now, I'd already done one before, if you remember, which everybody liked, but I never dreamed that I could ever do one from for the member site. It would have been too hard. You picked a section before for the member site of a satin dress to demonstrate a technique of a satin dress. And I've got the picture that you did or a section of the picture because you'd cut it down of the lace makers. That's right. In that thing. And I've always been amazed by it. It was always a really incredible picture. So you had been familiar with his work before. Yes. And you gave me the idea anyway. If you remember, we were talking about whose picture should I represent in the demonstration set up Monday. And there's all this about. I think it's about nine. I've actually done now. It might even be 10. Yes, it is 10. The last one I've done. So there are 10 spread out. This is going to be spread over the next couple of years, folks. You ain't going to get them all at once. And then we you said to me, well, why don't you do a Reggianini? And I thought, oh, that's a good idea. But I was I would have been put off because I thought, you know, people wouldn't be able to copy it. It's really hard. But as I'm doing the demonstration, and this is primarily a demonstration, we're not expecting people to to follow it. It gives all our members and others who wanted to look at this. An insight as to how one, the pastel pencils can operate in an oil environment because everything else was oil originally and to how they can see how I can tackle different fabrics like the dresses and the decor. Fantastic. OK, so let's next question is what techniques are seeing people seeing in this picture that they would not have seen before? They're seeing just simply the the curtains, heavy drape curtains. Now, I can't think of a picture where I've ever done anything like that before. Where would you? And I found that really nice to do. A floor, shiny floor that you get in the palaces and like a marble. Yes, well, yes, it probably was actually a marble. Yes. So that's another thing that then they're going to see this time that they've seen before. The marble on the wall, there's a pillar. I remember mentioned this once before that I was amazed at and the walls was marble. Again, never been done before. But the satin dresses are the key to this. I love doing them. They were really difficult and people will see me struggling a bit. But we pulled it off. And three very pretty faces as well. Quite small. I couldn't do the picture much bigger than it's just slightly smaller than a four size. The original was probably twice, three times as big as that. So I had to minimize the amount of detail I could put in. But nonetheless, it was still very detailed. How difficult were these new techniques for you to do? So such as the dresses or the sort of the reflective marble getting that reflective, shiny surface? How difficult were they to achieve? Pretty hard. It was made easier because I was using the pastelmat. And I don't think I did originally do it in not that one, but the original Reggianini in Ongre. And I found that hard. I found that harder than when I use a pastelmat. Pastelmat gave you a kind of, it gives you the opportunity to build up more than you can with Ongre. And this has helped me enormously. So that, although it was difficult, it was made easier by that very fact that I was using a pastelmat, a very responsive and it was a dark grey pastelmat I was using. And it worked out really well. And in the end, I was delighted with the way it actually turned out. And people will see the finished result, a very, very good demonstration piece, really. How important were the creta colours in this picture? Because this one, the Constable is the first time we introduced a few creta colours into the picture. They weren't shown so much on the demonstration. But this, you know, since then, we've, you know, included them a lot more and we're now selling them. With the, I know in this picture that you used a lot more creta colours. I did. Explain the difference that that made to the picture. It enhanced what I, the Faber-Castell pencils are great. Everybody knows that I think the world of them. However, you're limited from the colour point of view. So it was like finding in between colours all the time. And yes, you're quite right. There's quite a lot of those. I don't think I could have done it. I certainly wouldn't have done it anywhere near as well as I did if I hadn't got the creta colour. The vibrancy of some of the colours that are in the creta colour was, because they're a little softer, was very intense. And that helped me enormously, not only with the faces in the portrait and the skin, because the arms and so on. But with the dresses as well, you could get a lovely vibrancy and that pulsated almost out of the picture and people will see that. What struck me about this picture is how bright those dresses were. That's right. And that's the creta colour, is it? Yes. That's largely responsible. Yes. Combination of the two. You have the two. As I say, it's like having some in between colours. For instance, I've got a 233 we're very familiar with and 230 we're familiar with. Well, there's one creta colour that goes in between that. See what I mean? So instead of having two colours, I had three colours. Makes a big difference. And it was the same with the pinks. I got a lot more pinks with Faber-Castell. I've got maybe five pinks altogether. Well, I've got another five creta colours. So I had 10 pinks now. Can you imagine? And with Pastelmat being able to accept more layers, you're able to build that up. That's right. Yeah. How did you know when to stop building layers? That is a question. That's a really hard question for me to answer because I don't really know. It's, I think you've got to put that all down to experience. I used to be asked many years ago, how do you know when you finished a picture? How do you know when you put your last colour on? Are you going to put another one on? It's instinctive. It comes with instinct. You know it's right. It's when you're looking at a reference picture mainly, because I was looking at a reference picture for this. I can't make it up out of my head. And when I, I knew that I was going to achieve. So as I was building the colours up, I was getting there and suddenly I was there. And once you reach that point, you leave it alone. You move to the next one. There's so many times when I was starting out on my art quest, I used to overwork a lot of my pictures. And then I used to tell myself, why did you do that? Why did you use that colour? You didn't need to. Well, that teaches you because gradually you learn not to do that. So instinct takes over. You think you know when you've done enough. You're quite right. It is something that I'm sure would enter people's minds. And also another thing though, I've also heard people say to me, and this was mainly in the class when I had classes, you know, when I thought it was finished, you added another couple of colours and it changed it again. And I think when people see this, they'll think, oh, it's finished now. Hang on, what's he doing? He's putting more colours on. Please don't put more colours. You're going to spoil it. But I don't know. Spoiler alert, it works out all fine in the end. Yes, that's that's fantastic. So people that are watching this demonstration, it's naturally from what you said, it's going to be very, very challenging, as was the constable. Yes, a lot of people have done a really fantastic job of the constable, which I'm absolutely amazed, which is which has proved that people are more than capable of giving these pictures a go. What would your advice be to someone attempting this picture as you're demonstrating, following along with you? Well, first of all, I would tell them to put their expectations way down. Don't expect to do what I've done. They're not going to do it. Have a go at it and enjoy yourself. Enjoy every brush stroke or pencil stroke, should I say. And by doing just that, you'll get a result. May not be, you know, as good as you want it to be. And that would be, as I say, impossible. But you'll learn so much from it. But we're not really expecting people to do it. The whole idea of this was to show people how it can be done. And they will be as I was when I look at because I look at all the pictures back, as you know, all the video, I look back at it, and I'm quite amazed at what I've done. Because when you're when you're in the midst, when you're doing it, you go into a kind of another zone, really. People have heard me say that before, but you do go into another zone. You're not really taking in exactly what you're doing. You're just doing your job. But when you look at it back, I'm then looking like a viewer would look at it. And I think, how did I do that? And sometimes I can't believe that I've added another couple of colors when it looks good to me. So it's quite interesting. I think this is where, you know, if you're interested in art and you're interested in how things done, you know, you'll enjoy this and you will all of the others as well, because they're all the same. They've all got that magic to them. So just even if you don't want to have a go, just watching this is going to teach you so much. Oh, absolutely. Oh, yes, I guarantee it'll be in your head. Even if you take a couple of things away, I think, you know, next time I try that portrait or next time I try that dress or next time I do that background or next time I do that shoe, I'm going to remember to do that. So you can take that away with you. Fantastic. OK, thanks, Dad. This is going to I think this is going to introduce the subject really well to people. And as with the Constable, we hope if you do give it a go, you let us know what you thought and how you got on. Send us your work. And we look forward to sharing more demonstrations over the years because we've got a lot. Yeah, we have a lot. But this one is one that we this was a few down the line that we've brought forward because we thought it was such an extraordinary piece that we wanted to bring it closer up the timeline. So we'll do that with other projects that we feel that we feel need to be shared sooner. Thanks, Dad. Thanks, everyone, for listening. I'm Stephen Bradley. And I'm Colin Bradley. Enjoy your week.