When I started to paint this simple sketch this morning I never intended for the woman to look so unhappy – yet here we are a gaze of a life destroyed or lacking any chance of redemption. Just what has this woman seen or experienced to make her so broken? I wish I knew and I made the painting!
Beautiful light, Bitter wind. What better way to test the capabilities of my new camera on my new phone. I have to say overall I am very impressed with Apple’s ability to make a very well exposed JPEG. The image above is a fine example. Yes I have post produced the image in Photoshop but nothing like as much as you might think and there was sufficient details in the highlights and shadows to be able to make the whole thing possible. The over sharpening in the trees is a product of making a reduced JPEG for this blog – the original TIFF doesn’t suffer from this problem at all.
Last night I started watching the latest season of Arrested Development (Better late than never?). Anyway as I was watching the programme I started to get the feeling that this was perhaps the most insightful thing written about the current incumbent of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I couldn’t believe I was the first to see the similarities and of course many many other people got there first (Again not an usual experience for me!) In the end I kept trying to work out who was who and the funniest conclusion I came to was that Tobias Fünke has got to be Jared Kushner.
So thank you Stephen Colbert et al for all the jokes – none of them have the resonance of a Arrested Development.
January is in many ways the worst month of the winter. We have had all the head excitement of the Christmas period to help us through the shortest days. Now we have nothing to help lighten the the grey heavy skies. Deep joy.
If it is Monday then it must be time for my latest art class and I was genuinely surprised, no that makes me sound arrogant, but certainly informed. Not by the class itself but the discussion about art history. It all revolved around my understanding of the influence of Titian on Hans Holbein the younger. I have always thought that Holbein was far more of a Northern renaissance artist artest rather than one how came under the influence of the Italian renaissance and in particular Titian . Well after the class I went away and hit the books and it turns out that Titian really did have far greater influence on Holbein than I thought. So that made the class worth while (it is always satisfying to learn something new). If only the same could be said about the painting as it stands – however I have next week to improve things – lets hope it does the trick.
Still got a bit of a Diego Velázquez vibe going on at the moment…only just a little though. Mid January is a real bummer. All around where I live there are storms, blizzards and frosts yet here we seem to get mainly …well how to describe it? Grey. Now don’t get me wrong I really don’t want bad weather here nor anywhere else for that matter but January whether does seem to be depressing. Today we started with snow and now it is just melting into a mush which only makes things greyer. The only good thing to mention about today is that it has 2 minutes extra light than yesterday. I don’t like January.
Certainly not a stairway to heaven.
If it’s Monday then it is time for my painting class. This was my version of Portrait of Juan from Pareja by Diego Velázquez. As a painting exercise I’m quite pleased with the result but as a copy of the original? I’m really not at all sure whether there is much validity in that question as this was an exercise exploring a limited tonal range – in this case between black and white rather than making an absolute copy – for one thing this sketch was made in just under two and half hours using acrylic paints – neither restrictions I am sure were placed on Velázquez! Equally the large photocopy I was using was deliberately degraded to make the exploration of the tonal range easier. And of course there is the simple fact that Velázquez was a genius painter and I’m not. Given all these caveats I’m pleased with what I produced.
It is not the first time I have attempted to copy Velázquez. These are from a few years ago but nonetheless I’m pleased with the results. These of course were created using Brushes on the iPad rather than paints. This has lead me to ask the very simple question: Why do I create these images? Well the simple answer is because they give me great pleasure and satisfaction. I have no real desire to do anything with my art than to improve and satisfy myself and given those narrow goals I think all of these paintings work in their own right.
It is January so that means I get my watercolors out…not sure why that is but there does seem some strange correlation.
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