A Humorous Twist on the Old Masters’ painting style
“The Old Masters with a TV Twist” – Painted by the author
The need for stress reducers during intense writing
There is no question that writing a memoir about abuse …frankly, about anything serious in one’s life if you are emotionally open and honest, can get intense. It takes energy to face it, feel it, process it, and extract the meaning behind the events. So, in order to maintain a healthy outlook it is important to have some activity for a “tension-breaker.” For me, that is art — both looking at good art as well as creating my own oil paintings.
The Old Masters paintings
I happen to love the Old Masters – whether the styles and color tones of the Northern Renaissance, such as Rembrandt, Albrecht Durer, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, or Hieronymous Bosch; or the Italian Renaissance painters and sculptors. I have a lot of books on the various artists or on the time period.
Giving the Old Masters a “modern” twist
Recently I decided to have some fun with the topic and created the above painting – The Old Masters With a TV Twist. I love the idea of throwing in some current-day object(s) to give a modern twist to the classical still-life painting approach! So there will be more of these coming along!
BTW, if you want to know more about the “Old Masters” – here you go:
For anyone who might enjoy watching the progress of my paintings from blank canvas to finished “masterpiece” please check out my Facebook page: Paintings of Light and Hope:
Photo link by author
You can also view my art progress on Instagram (if you’re not on Facebook)
Let us have a moment of silence for the dear departed meatloaf…..one should never do a meatloaf in a crockpot without “other things” and liquid – it’s juices do NOT constitute liquid…..windows open in the house on a cold mid-January morn……eating out tonight. By then I might be able to pry the meatloaf out of the pot….. for whatever talents I have in oil painting, writing, studying sea creatures and finding odd facts to share here….that talent does NOT translate to cooking skills….the kitchen is a no-man’s land this morning…..
Update on the seagull seascape painting. Added a bit more to all of the seagulls, more highlights and shading to the pilings, and ropes around pilings and connecting them.
Now the painting needs to dry so I can then put a slightly greenish brown wash over the rope – give it that weathered, sea-algae coated look. Right now the rope is too white. The two gulls on the left are getting closer but need to dry before I can put in some defining highlights and shadows on the feathers, eyes and mouths.
The hovering gull is ’emerging from the canvas’ – feathers starting to be defined, beak and eyes starting to go in, darks and lights in the feathers getting stronger. Stay tuned for next progress shot.
Here’s a current “painting-in-progress” . All seagulls need finishing, then some ropes around the pilings and one rope connecting the pilings. I’ll update the pics as I go along.
Canvas size is 12″ x 24″ and the medium is my favorite: oils.
Yes, the seagulls have no faces yet! Maybe I should leave them that way as some kind of philosophical statement? 🙂
I so love seascapes, sea birds, wooden pilings, stormy seas….
I often paint fish and undersea creatures. Squids, southern flounder, American shad, krill, just to name a few. I will paint many more. Hence I’m always on the lookout for great pictures. I don’t copy them but use them to inspire me, and to sometimes put together a composite image of a few creatures in a scene of my own making.
Also as a person who paints and loves the ocean and its life, I am always seeking news on its health, problems, successes. A recent topic of interest to me, was the recent (2010) completion of the Census of Marine Life. ( http://www.coml.org) It boggled my mind that someone could do this and I wondered how.
An article on Gizmodo recently appeared, that included a video on this very topic. As the video says, there are places in the ocean so remote they could not be explored, groups of fish so large they could not be counted, animals that travel so far they can’t be followed. If all that is true, how then did they do the Census of Marine Life for 10 years? The answer is revealed in this article and video. And you can find out what “OBIS” stands for. Just amazing work.
Okay. It’s been over a year since I took a “sabbatical” from my blog. In that time I’ve taken a break from writing projects too. The reason? I re-discovered my love for oil painting, and decided to spend some quality time focused full time on that. In the coming year, I’ll have more info available and will be connecting this blog with my website where my art is on display/sale. For now I’m trying to solve the intricacies of how to get all these sites to talk to each other. Stay tuned.
Oh, if you’d like to see what’s up with my art website, just check out:
Here’s one I just loved doing. Between the vibrancy of the colors of the mahi mahi, and the fact I just let loose with several different kinds of blue, from Prussian blue to Cerulean, Ultramarine to Phthalo….warms and colds, it was fun to just go with it. And then of course, there’s the sea spray…..perhaps that’s the most fun of all. 🙂
As mentioned, I’ve been painting and have 3 new ones done and a 4th almost completed. For a start, here’s one of them I don’t believe I’ve posted yet….Sea Nettles. While I love to do detail work, with my sea creature paintings, I’ve been leaning more toward “impressionistic.” So here’s the first!
For years now, I’ve collected nature articles, everything from monkeys in the zoo, to whale fall carcass ecosystems, to little kitty cats stowing away on an airplane. I don’t know why, I just love them. I feel like I’m supposed to do something with them, but haven’t been sure what. Yet I expect it will make itself clear eventually.
I do know that I will spend more of my time in my blog focusing on interesting nature tidbits as that is my real love. After working on the Under the Pier novel, I have set it aside because I wanted to take a break from fiction, and focus on the nonfiction, nature aspects of life. When I decide to create a new story, I’ll know, but for now, I want to explore and indulge my love of nature. In fact, what reinforced that was all the research I did on Narragansett Bay creatures for that novel. That always just lit a fire in me. So….for the time being, I will focus on nature.
In fact that brings me to the other aspect of my blog – my art. That is the other thing I’ll begin to focus on because that is the other love in my life – my oil painting. In a nice sense of synergy, all my research on sea creatures has led me to begin developing a collection of sea creature paintings, as well as seascapes and such. I want to build a full collection of those creatures to eventually put on display. I’ll continue my detailed seascapes and landscapes and such, but the sea creatures paintings have a slightly freer, more impressionistic quality (at least as impressionistic as I’ll ever get 🙂 ) than my usual work.
Oh, and re – nature – still waiting for my ant farm ants. 🙂
It’s been a while since I’ve written, but that doesn’t mean no activity. I have 3 new paintings that need to be either photographed or uploaded to this blog. So that’s coming soon, and more paintings to follow.
I’ve also decided to take a break from writing per se, and “play.” My fiddler crab project yielded quite a lot of fun, AND has brought me quite a following…it’s the steadiest draw on this blog. 🙂
SO, I will continue in the fun vein. Very shortly (like as soon as Amazon delivers it so I can mail my coupon for the critters), I will be revisiting something from my childhood, and my son’s : AN ANT FARM!!!! I thought it would be fun to do that again only this time, chronicle it from the perspective of the 5o-year-olds in the house, ie my husband and I. Perhaps we’ll both enjoy it more than we did when we were kids!
Also coming soon will be my hermit crab project. I’ve been accumulating supplies so once the ant farm is up and running, I’ll move the hermit crab forward.
Hence, my blog will have “critter followers” of all kinds.
Speaking of critters – just a short update on the fiddlers….I’m sorry to say that in the last month or so, both Scarlett O’Hara and Melanie Hamilton have died. One I think, didn’t survive her molting, the other may just have been old age. They both lived abou a year, a lot longer than guaranteed by PetsMart. Admiral Byrd is still alive and well and just molted again. It will be interesting to see if he is much more long-lived than the two ladies. I haven’t decided if I want to restart the fiddler project with new females. I may just let it go as is. We’ll see.
Anyway, stay tuned in the not too distant future for ANTS!! 🙂
Soul Mosaic 