"Hamlet" Master Study, pt. 2

This has been the most challenging master study I have done, maybe even one of the most challenging things I have done as an artist, period.

It is testing my both my patience and skill level. Not only is the scale of this painting massive, the amount of detail it has is ten times the amount that I am used to. I am painterly, I use brushstrokes to give impressions of detail, half because I don't know how to render a lot of things yet, and half because I just love how it looks. So studying Abbey has taken me so far out of my comfort zone when it comes to master studies, and that is one of the reasons why I chose him in the first place. All of my studies to this point have been cropped studies, value studies or of Sargent, and while Sargent's realism is intimidating, his style is not. His is the closest to how I love to paint. 

And while Abbey also paints pretty loosely, he has so many patterns and people in his work that it is very overwhelming for an artist like me. The biggest problem continues to be the proportions, even after I went back to fix them. I shrank it down, measured it again by sight and with a few lines, but it is still off. It looks good from far away, but when I enlarge it there is not enough room for everything. I have to accept that the proportions are just going to be an approximation and move on, because this is what I am capable of right now. 

So instead of copying Abbey's style (which isn't the point of master studies anyway) I am going to make a compromise and meet it somewhere in the middle. I will keep my painterly style and level of rendering, while still painting close to what Abbey did. I might do some detailed cropped studies like I have before of my favorite parts of the painting. 

I can tell you that if I had tried to do this master study a year ago, I would have given up on it already. It is that intimidating, but I will finish it.