I’ve started work on the Hanged Man, painting a first layer of Raw Umber to start defining the figure. I’m particularly happy to see the foreshortening of the figure working well. Pitture infamanti were part of a tradition that was designed to cause humiliation to its target by displaying in public the shame of the [...]
I’ve just cracked open a collection of essays from a conference titled “Gnosis and Hermeticism” which looks promising, although I want to get through Dante’s Paradiso before I really get stuck in. There’s a passage in the introduction that I liked: “…one openly fights an enemy as long as one fears that he still might [...]
Welcome relief has come to the studio with the completion of almost all the leaves and flowers. I’ve reworked the areas that got a little too much of the cobalt blue and the white glaze coat, and fixed up lots of little transitions where the vines twist onto each other and around the legs of [...]
“So, if the intermediate world of the stars and planets corresponds to the imaginative faculty of the soul, it is then, through the imagination that we can resonate sympathetically with the heavens; the imagination which will lead to a deeper, more unified kind of knowledge. We must distinguish here from our common use of the [...]
The morning glory has spread to cover much of the calf of the Emperor’s right leg, but I want to show more of it reaching up to pass his left foot, perhaps even stretching out tendrils toward his abdomen and increasing the feeling that he is being overwhelmed by the creeping vines. Working on the [...]
I want to look at a caveat from the great master painter William Bouguereau, who I regard with awe: “I detest realism” he told us, “for it is nothing but photography, neither more nor less! Well, if you are a painter it is so that you can do better than photography, so that you can [...]
There’s nothing like building upon the foundations built by giants to make certain that your own work is of better quality. At the Getty we visited some of my favorite paintings (Alma-Tadema’s “Spring”, a lovely Sargent portrait, a pair of Tissot society ladies and one of Godward’s best pieces, “Mischief and Repose”). But I was [...]
Following shooting photos of Amy for the figure sitting on the ground I sketched the drawing onto the canvas using a simple one foot grid as a guide. I like this composition very much for a couple of curious reasons: first, the way the woman is seated refers to a figure on the Gundestrup cauldron, [...]
Because I didn’t like the balance of the composition as it stood I’ve added more fabric to the left side of the dress, making it extend under the Queen’s hand and off the edge of the panel, creating a more fluid feeling to the bottom of the painting. I’m enjoying working out the folds of [...]
I’ve moved on with a new piece, with Suzy as my model (I’ll get to the Green Man’s ears soon, I promise). I photographed her during a Figure Drawing class several months ago, thinking that this pose was too pretty to miss. The Pre-Raphaelites and other Victorian Aesthetes used to paint clothes onto nude figures [...]
