Monet's Pond

Water Lilies, 1906, Claude Monet, Art Institute of Chicago, Source by Wikipedia

Monet's passion for trying to see the true beauty of the pond

 Claude Monet (1840-1926), a representative Impressionist painter, traveled to find various landscapes, and in 1883 he settled in a small French village called Giverny. And for a whopping 43 years before his death, he planted flowers, built ponds in the yard of his house, and painted in his gardens in Giverny. A panoramic masterpiece called "Water Lilies" with a pond as the subject was created at this time. He says it took many years to understand water lilies and donated to France after his death.

We are likely to be sucked into a pond in the painting whenever we look at the pictures. I can feel his passion for trying to see the essence and beauty of objects, primarily through the angle of the pond. The pond looks flat at first but becomes steep as you go back. It is easy to see why by following the artist's eyes. In other words, it is because the beauty is captured from the angle of the eyes and mind, not the angle of the camera or lens.

  We don't just stare at one focus when we admire the beautiful scenery. We scatter the whole thing once with a panoramic view and organize it into one data. And we look for the attractive point again. And then, we give our definition of the beauty of objects. 

 ​The angle of looking at things in such a panoramic way and focusing on the beauty of that place is very impressive to me in his painting "Water lilies ."So whenever I visit an art gallery and encounter Monet's paintings, I always sit down and look at them slowly. Monet's paintings are a must-see while sitting in a chair. If you sit on a chair like this, you can enjoy the three-dimensional effect of the pond extending from the floor to a distant place. And you can get even closer to the beauty and ecstasy of every corner of the pond that Monet was trying to show you. It depicts how happy he must have been sitting in this pond in his later years.

Monet in his studio, 1920, source by Wikipedia

  Whenever I drew a pond with digital art, something was disappointing with angles. That's the angle of the object. The angle of the lens does not perfectly follow the image. I want to catch the beauty of the pond and stare at the distant place that blends with it, but if I follow the camera lens, the beauty of the pond cannot be fully captured. In short, 2% is not enough. After pondering, I tried to capture the pond's beauty in my way, as shown below, through the photo-merge function of Photoshop. ​In this way, if I spread the view points in a panoramic way and merge them into one point, I can put a lot of things in the pond like Monet's pond.

In the pond, 2021, Myungja Anna Koh

  ​In the meantime, I pay tribute to the painter Monet, who discovered and realized the beauty of this pond repeatedly over the past 40 years and finally learned it and showed it to the world. Because of this devotion, we can see the beauty without efforts that this world cannot easily see. It seems like a cool thing. He was reluctant to show his pond paintings to his acquaintances, only drawing ponds for over 40 years. The reason is that it is still not perfect. We should try to get closer to his humility.

Later on, I will post the production process on my site info (tutorial) menu.