Jericho Sadorra

In the Style of Jan Brueghel the Elder

Jan Brueghel was an interesting pick for mefrom the beginning of looking at his work I
knew making a piece of art that mimicked his style was going to be a challenge, but instead of
being nervous, I felt excited by this newfound challenge. In order to understand his numerous
works of art, I had to learn where Brueghel came from and how he painted, but this much I
already knew from viewing some of his pieces: he exercised contrast and vibrant colors that
make numerous places in his work pop. Upon reading up on him, my assumption on his vibrant
style was confirmed. In the Oxford Art Dictionary, its said he used his colours so as to
skillfully and harmoniously bring out juxtaposed bright, pure tones (Oxford Art). Immediately, I
knew that this was going to be a challenge for me. I love to use dark tones to naturally make
elements in my work pop, so using pure tones and having bright colors pop in contrast with each
other posed difficult in my mind. At this point, I knew I had to make something work to make
colors pop naturallyand what are naturally pure and bright mediums that work well on sulfite
paper? Soft pastels. Oil pastels came into mind, but Brueghels work were deeply captivating
with the detail work, so the messiness of the oil pastels just wouldnt work. Despite having the
oil pastels work better as theyd look more like paint than the chalky soft pastels, I dropped that
attribute and opted in for a little bit more detail. With the space given, working with oil pastels
wouldve limited what I could put on the space I wanted to use. Overcoming this predicament
wasnt the end of the road though; because I opted for soft pastels instead of oil, I had absolutely
no idea what to expect with the texture and how the pastel worked on the paper. This constituted
so much smearing and chalk on my hand that my work wouldve looked like a five year-olds if it
werent for the rubber cement eraser. I also noticed that when I worked with the soft pastels,

motion could be seen in a clearer way than oil pastels. This is a good thing because Brueghels
brushwork was renowned for its fluidityI saw it because the motion was alive in his work.
With figuring out how to approach his work, I had to find what to take inspiration from.
Brueghel primarily made two kinds of works: still-lifes and flower paintings. Right off
the bat, despite being in awe at his still-lifes because I deeply adore works that are packed with
symbolism and made with a realist style, I knew that even with all my effort and then some, I
could not amount the perfection of his still-life works. His Five Senses series were filled with
goddesses and cupids along with objects associated with the sense [they] represent (Oxford
Art). I cannot, for the life of me, draw humans in a realistic sense so drawing and coloring in
goddesses were definitely out of the picture. I chose the route of his simpler, but complex in
color, work: the bouquets. In this sense, I could focus on the fine details of the flower and the
vibrancy of the work instead of worrying if the left arm is disproportionate to the right and why
the head of the figure is gigantic compared to the body. Even being the simpler work, his flower
paintings were nothing to scoff at. Brueghel with great skill he presents richly coloured
flowers, flasks of perfume, musical instruments and food all arranged in apparent disorder
(Oxford Art). This disorder, I believe, was the key to his success. Because Brueghel put so much
time, effort, and skill into his simple flower paintings, he honed the ability to make seemingly
decorative subjects, previously considered to be of secondary importance, the principal subjects
of his paintings (Oxford Art).
A big part of Brueghels career came from is collaboration work with Paul Rubens.
Rubens and Brueghel made astounding works like Adam and Eve. He often painted the
landscapes or flowers in Rubens works which explains why the landscaping for those works
looked so detailed (Oxford Art). You can look left and right, up and down, from every inch of the

work you can see immense details. Brueghels landscape work was able to give a clarity to his
compositions of landscapes with such large numbers of figures (Oxford Art). The immersive
detail his work entails might pose a problem by giving the onlooker too much to take in at once,
but Brueghels work, despite the multiplicity of details in no way [damaged] the freshness of his
colourful vision. Because of this, he earned the nickname of Velvet Brueghel (Oxford Art).
Brueghel transitioned between two periods of art: baroque and mannerism. His first few
works were very baroque in naturethe landscape paintings captivated the embodiment of
nature. It popped with detail; you can even say Brueghels paintings interpreted the definition of
detail. You could see what direction the river was goingyou can even say that you could feel
the direction of the water. The drama between characters in his art was apparent. There are
several YouTube videos that exacerbate the fine nitty-gritty details and even goes as far as to
make a story out of the actions of the characters. In his later works, it was just his manner to have
excessively vibrant and detailed paintings. Thats why he was called the Velvet Brueghel in the
mannerist period of art. Despite this attribution, his work was seen more baroque than mannerist,
but I have to digress that the two go hand in hand in Brueghels work.
The goal with my interpretation of Brueghels work is more to accomplish the vibrancy
he imposes onto his work. Im not too worried with how detailed it isits not the point because
a bouquet will speak for itself with the color it presents itself with. Im confident in having made
my work with his style, from the use of motion in my work to the use of pure colors to bring
contrast and vibrancy in my flowers.

Works Cited
Brueghel, Jan I, the Elder. Oxford University Press, 2006. Web.