The Dance

The work of Henri Matisse is fascinating with bright colour palettes bold forms.
The simple and yet expressive movements in his painting “The dance” have been replicated and interpreted by hundreds of other artists. I am drawing lots of moka pots and coffee mugs now and impersonate them sometimes and this naturally led to my interpretation with espresso cups as figures.

I have been working solely in Procreate, with apple pen on Ipad Pro, including sketches.
Brush - Dry ink.

I decided to use the authentic colours of the Matisse’s painting and extracting them is quite easy in Procreate - just tap on the colour and hold and it appears on the brush.
After extracting all of the colours I want to use I construct my palette.

Referring to the original painting I started working on the composition, using simple forms.
Shaping the characters, same movements and same number as in the original art.

I wanted to create anthropomorphic espresso cups and also preserve the mood of the original painting with the movements and relation to the figures to each other.
I drew every character on a separate layer so that is easy to move and work on each of them.
Also blocked some main colours.

I painted the background, and also put some rough texture

Putting all elements together and adjusting some details on the different layers.
I applied some texture (Honeyeater brush) and also played a bit with the colours of the lines.

Added some more texture (Honeyeater brush, Nikko Rull brush), and to unite all elements applied a filter layer on top (orange on very low opacity, wish some noise effect added).