Primavera
La Primavera, Sandro Botticelli, c. 1482Last night at 8.44pm it was the spring equinox in the southern hemisphere. I won’t bore you with all the scientific details of this astronomical event – suffice to say this is the date day and night are the same length. The word ‘equinox’ itself sounds so pretty and mysterious, as though it ought to be marked by strange and beautiful occurrences.
Once such beautiful thing that was immediately brought to my mind is Sandro Botticelli’s 1482 painting Primavera. I have always adored the gorgeous detail and the lush profusion of flowers, oranges and leaves. Apparently there are 500 identified plant species, with about 190 different flowers in this painting, and at least 130 of these have been named! My jaw drops in admiration of Botticelli; I bow to the master.
Read Wikipedia’s interesting entry on the painting.
Nail Art
I’ve been clearing out junk recently, which included going through my makeup drawer. I have a lot of nail polishes that I have collected over the years, and after recently suffering a spate of chipped manicures, I investigated the shelf life of nail polish.
Apparently nail enamel has a shelf life of only 1–2 years. Ooops. Many of mine are ten years old! An appropriate way to dispose of it is to tip out the enamel onto newspaper and let it dry until the solvents evaporate. Hmmm, I thought. I can do better than that. A drawing painted with enamel would be an interesting experiment.
Hair in Orange Flip :: Watts // Big Up // No flashSo today I quickly sketched out a drawing, the main concept being that somehow the finished illustration should involve polka dots – a) because they’re cute, and b) enamelled polka dots would create a great texture.
Most of my nail polishes are buff or blush tones, or strong shades of red. Very little pink (which is odd, for me). There are a few oddities amongst them – turquoise, navy, white – but they are new and still usable.
Dress in Glisten, Bow in Ballet Buff :: Watts // Big Up // No flashUnsurprisingly, painting with nail polish is rather different from any other wet medium I have used. Things I learned:
- The brush is horrible – too long, flat, stiff, and not flexible enough. Also, it blobs unpredictably.
- One needs to work fast. It dries quickly on the paper so it is difficult to create flat, smooth colour.
- Pouring is fun, but enamel is far more viscous than ink for example (obviously), but equally unpredictable.
- Two coats are better than one. (This we all already know!)
- Mistakes, if they drop on dried enamel, can be lifted off relatively easily with a cotton tip if applied immediately.
Polka Dots in Firecracker :: Watts // Big Up // No flashI am quite pleased with the finished illustration, especially with its coppery effect. It’s tactile, and shiny. It glistens in the light. That copper colour that forms the dress is actually called Glisten – and I like it more in this application than I ever did on my nails! The illustration doesn’t scan very well though, which is not surprising, so I’ve included some photos (shot at an angle to take advantage of the sunlight) of the work in progress.
This was quite fun, and I’m looking forward to doing some more, although I think I might take advantage of the current craze for polish in every colour of the rainbow and stock up on additional shades.
A Snow Flurry in Van-Couvered in Snow :: Watts // Big Up // No flashColours used in this illustration: Orange Flip, Peach Chiffon, Ballet Buff, Sheer Blush, In the Buff, Sorbet, Glisten, Firecracker, Marooned (all by Revlon); Russian Navy, Passion, Van-Couvered in Snow (all by O.P.I.).
A Flurry of Snow :: Watts // Big Up // No flash
The Last Landscape
I had a chuckle last weekend when I saw this on display on the back patio at my parents’ home. I painted this when I was either 15 or 17 (I can’t quite make out the date of the signature), but I am pretty sure it was one of the very few naturalistic landscapes I ever painted. It is an entirely imagined view, and I remember working on it in my high school art classes, with my teacher guiding me on technique. It was possibly the very first oil painting I created. Eventually I moved on from oils, and now my favourite media for drawing are oil pastels, charcoal, and soft pastels (in that order). Any strange or surreal landscapes I create still come entirely from my mind’s eye though.
The First Day of Spring
Spring’s arrived, hooray! And such a lovely sunny, breezy day for Father’s Day too. My Frankie calendar flips over to this bright and cheerful picture by Ana Albero.
Ana Albero hails from Spain, though she is currently based in Berlin. She also works in pencil, the drawings in that medium have a pleasant and spontaneous, naïve style. I like her playfulness with the picture planes too: Albero alters the perspective as the Egyptians did.
The fresh colour palette of this illustration makes me think of Gauguin’s Fauvist pictures and summertime – a little ahead of the season admittedly. But if watermelon is more rightly the flavour of summertime, for me, the delicious mock-orange scent of the pittosporum wafting on the night breeze truly heralds spring.
See more of Ana Albero’s delightful illustrations at her website.
Paper Paintings
Joseph Albers collageRecently a two-volume book on Joseph Albers (1888–1976) landed on my desk: Interaction of Color, by Joseph Albers (Yale University Press, 1963). I had never studied him or his work, and was unfamiliar with it. Upon a flick through the book, I really can’t say that I was particularly excited by his abstract homages to the square. They make me yawn in fact. But two paper collages did catch my eye and impress me.
Woman with a Hat, Henri Matisse, 1905In an effort to understand the relationship between colour as expressed by old masters, Albers created reproductions of their work; two are presented in his book. One is Matisse’s fauvist painting Woman with a Hat of 1905, and the other is an Expressionst work that I don’t recognise (even a Google images search didn’t enlighten me).
So often we see paper collages created from cut paper – and many times very intricately – that it was a thrill to see these torn pieces of coloured paper laid side by side. Exciting and tactile, with a messy immediacy about them, their rough edges blend like paint, making the collages far more akin to painting than their sharp-edged counterparts.
Joseph Albers paper collageHere is what Albers says about them:
Therefore, in our study of the masters – both past and present – there is, beyond mere retrospection and above verbal analysis, re-creating by re-performing their selection and presentation of color; their seeing and reading of color – in other words, their giving a meaning to color.
Our aim is not production of precise replicas as copyists do in museums. We try to give a general impression only as to climate, temperature, aroma, or sound of their work – not minute details.
The purpose of such study is neither to find out, for instance, whether ultramarine or cobalt blue was used, nor to register the factual content of the painter’s palette.
It is another means of learning to develop a sensitive and critical eye for color relatedness.
What a great – and certainly educational – exercise.
Expressionist artist Georges Rouault