Sarazhin's Hands

[image_with_animation image_url=”10799″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Denis Sarazhin is a Ukranian-born painter whose textured works seem to be carved out of rough flecks of color. The angular joints, and compositional habit of using a body’s limbs to divide the background remind me of Egon Schiele. Notice how his style is to start with a dark underpainting, and paint lights on top, but not cover the first tone completely, so the dark specks and flecks showing through the lighter opaque color give it a bright and hard constructed surface look.

Special note to my “Hands and Feet” class: notice the grouping and the spacing of the fingers. [image_with_animation image_url=”10807″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%[image_with_animation image_url=”10802″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] For a palette, he recommends the following oil paints:

Titanium White, Indian Yellow, Cadmium Yellow, Cadmium Red Light, Cadmium Orange, Madder Lake Rose Permanent, Manganese Violet Light (or Ultramarine Rose), Cobalt Violet Deep, Cobalt Violet Light, Ceruleum Blue, Cobalt Blue (or Ultramarine Light), Transparent Mars Yellow, Transparent Mars Orange, Burnt Umber, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre, Mars Black (or Ivory Black).

The pigment list is from an invitation to a workshop in Italy. If anyone cares to join him there this October, here’s the link: https://www.artescapeitaly.com/denissarazhin These look like a lot of colors, but look carefully. He uses a lot of complimentary colors, in variations. He pairs yellow with purple (but several yellows, and several purples), and orange with blue (but several oranges, and several blues). He avoids green, and direct red. [image_with_animation image_url=”10812″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] See that palette knife work in the background? The figures tend to stay separated from the space around them. The hard edged halo on the lighter pieces reinforces this effect. For the dark paintings, he uses shadow to soften the figures into the background a bit.

” load_in_animation=”none[image_with_animation image_url=”10806″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] Look at his tiny brushstrokes! Each area of color is clearly distinct. Painting with delineated colors is called mosaic, or tile painting. Here’s a detail of the painting above: [image_with_animation image_url=”10803″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%”] I’m including the image below for scale. [image_with_animation image_url=”10815″ alignment=”center” animation=”None” box_shadow=”none” max_width=”100%