I’m definitely impressionistic at heart, because I try to give a sense of purpose to my strokes, that’s the definition of mastery for me, to be able to express something with your lines, so for this reason I’m definitely in that category yes, I try to build a picture with the fewest strokes possible, it helps to capture the moment, the feeling, again, the impression. After that I have to be very realistic too, because as a designer you have to carry more than moods, you have to carry ideas, themes, directions, so I put an emphasis on realism too just after the composition build up.

© Simon Goinard, 2016

I have a simple rule for that part; always depicting the subject with a more accurate optical effect of color, light or details. Basically I put a focus point on the picture, and in that focus I’m more grounded and realistic, and that’s my approach and the trick of the style.

© Simon Goinard, 2016

Gravitating between realism and impressionism is indeed complex but doable with a bit of thought, and if you look closely at the history of art, you’ll see that it has always been like that, every major currents built a bridge between two others to emerge, so what I’m doing is I must confess not new at all.

The Importance of Background

© Simon Goinard, 2016

© Simon Goinard, 2016

© Simon Goinard, 2016

The story and narrative are very important, in fact it’s all that matters if you look closely, because without them a picture is only at best a skills demo, and that’s not really interesting for me.

The background + the story equal the subject and mood of the picture, frankly the only things that make sense if you’re not working abstractedly. And from a pure professional perspective, concept artists are here to illustrate thoughts and concepts, ours or the ones from the client, so the influences of the ideas have to be major.

The more you think the world you’re painting, the more profound the piece will be, and the more people will feel carried away and intimate with what you’re trying to depict. Conceptualizing is the fact that we’re translating thoughts into visual language, so if the picture is not influenced by the narrative, it’s clearly not a success for me.

Building Characters

© Simon Goinard, 2016

Characters are the easy road that leads to storytelling, after twenty years of practice I’m pretty sure of that now, and that is why portrait is such a powerful genre. People are what we see the most everyday in our lives, and what we affiliate the most with emotions, so that make them kind of an easy trick (and maybe a trap) for a painter who wants to narrate something easily.

© Simon Goinard, 2016

I often fell for this, and when I don’t have time to create a larger picture, I always end up creating a portrait because of that, because it’s faster to create a story with a face and a costume than with a battle scene or a coronation.

© Simon Goinard, 2016

The look and feel of my characters are very distinctive of that play, they’re like theatre masks for me, that’s how it works; the romantic effect probably comes from what I told earlier about the tension between realism and impressionism, and the feeling that sometimes makes them special often comes with my experience of playing this “character trick”, knowing instantly what will show up in the end when I paint a distinctive look on the face, when I’m putting a specific costume, or precise details or certain colors, and then mixing all of that.

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