Little Ballerina

I was inspired by a painting I saw last week at the Grand Rapids Art Museum. The painting was by Robert Henri, one of the great oil painters who dominated the field of realism at the beginning of the 20th century. He was one of the eight painters of a group informally known as "The Ashcan Painters", They focused on realism and real life subject matter, some of it not always pretty.

The painting I saw was of a little girl and the colors that dominated it were reddish orange and teal. I used the color scheme to make this painting of a little ballerina. My style of painting is different of course, but I used colors I thought he might have used: Venetian red, yellow ocher and viridian. These are colors I typically don't use too often so it was a fun experiment.

Here is Henri's painting and mine is below.

9" x 12" oil on panel

Little Ballerina