Painting a Botero - A Case of Maximum Tension Painting

In the earlier year of my art learning, when I told my art teachers that I wanted to paint a Botero's work, they tried to dissuade me. They tried to convince me that painting a Botero is not easy and the students in the studio seldom try a Botero. There was only one student in the studio who painted a small canvas of Botero's work and it took 4 months of unusually difficult course to finish it.

I was charmed by the solitary mood of Botero's <The Guitarist>. I could not overcome the temptation. When I conclusively told the teachers that I would begin painting <The Guitarist>, they reluctantly acknowledged but still strongly warned me that it would never be an easy task.

And I did complete Botero's <The Guitarist>, below, which took me almost 3 months. Indeed, it was one of the most intense painting experiences for me.

The above is my painting after Botero's <The Guitarist>.

This is the original <The Guitarist> of Botero (1977).

I still wonder why this seemingly simple and straightforward painting was so hard to reproduce. What are the secrets of Botero's art that make it so uniquely beyond the reach of casual duplicators?

There can be many answers. The foremost one that I can think of is the omnipresent tension in Botero's painting. In Botero's painting, the figures and props are bulged like balloons. This makes his style distinctly humorous, but in a technical sense, every line in Botero's painting is tight and tense as a result. It is like every line in the painting is like a string pushed to its maximum stretch. Look at a Botero's painting, and there is not a single line that is loose. Everything is bulging with maximum pressure from the inside.

So, there should be no relaxed touch of brushes in any part of the canvas. When you paint after an Impressionist painting, though it looks complex in shapes and colors on surface, your touch of brushes can be liberal. But, in case of Botero, painting is a very strictly measured activity.

This is not only true of the lines in the painting. The colors of Botero as well, contrary to the appearance, are unbelievably sophisticated. If you look at a part of the chair and table in <The Guitarist> for example, there are an astonishing degree of details. The colors are smoothed out, of course, but they simply cannot be sufficiently expressed by an easy-minded gradation technique. Like the lines, the spread of colors are strictly measured. On top of that, you should not let the details buried under the spread of colors.

After I finished reproduction of Botero, a teacher said to me that only two - I and another student - in the studio completed Botero's paintings, and the two have one thing in common - predisposition to be a perfectionist. She said, only a perfectionist wants to try a Botero.