I love the adaptability of charcoal.
The tactile experience is what is best though.
A scarab investigating my fingers.
My late friend Arno and his dog. I battled to get Arno to look like himself, but the dog was easy. And yes, the dog only had one front leg, I am not doing an AI stunt.
I have joined the Ignite Photographic Club and they have a monthly assessment session. Everyone is invited to submit one photograph and one of the committee assess the photographs.
Last month was F is for faces. So I got creative. Portraits of me by various artists.
Clock wise, starting top left.
Self portrait i.e. me
John Robert
Veronica Reid
Amanda Hayes
And the back view: Amanda Hayes a cutout of a much bigger painting titled The Watcher.
Here is the full painting : The Watcher – and I swear I was looking at a sunset, and not the naked woman. 🙂
I was invited to submit a painting to an exhibition featuring Greg Kerr students. One of my paintings was selected to be exhibited.
My painting Uncertain Times was selected for exhibition.
The opening was last Saturday you can see the paintings on display in the Art.B FaceBook page.
I was asked by an ex colleague to paint a scene from a photograph of her home town. The figures in the foreground were exceptionally difficult and I ended up using a tiny brush and painting and repainting each figure numerous times.
I contacted my ex colleague and told her it was finished. After 18 months she has not come to collect it. And then a woman came to collect a frame we had no use for.
Her reaction was immediate: “It’s beautiful! My mother wore those clothes!”
There was only one possible response to that, and she left with the frame with the painting fitted.
Cape Town has some great Murals and Graffiti. As I get pictures, I will add them here.
Muizenberg
Recently while studying Goya’s painting May 3, 1808 I got this terrible feeling that I was missing something or that something was wrong and I couldn’t see what it was.
Here is Goya’s painting 3 May. It shows random civilians being executed after French troops were attached the day before.
I stared at the picture for along while and then it struck me, their stance looked all wrong.
Now those soldiers are members Napoleon’s Old Guard who were veterans so they knew what they were doing.
Why was the stance wrong? Well lets look at the soldier closest to us
He is leaning forward, holding a musket with the bayonet fixed. He has to be unbalanced and his head is tilted forward rather than sideways.
I checked all the literature I could find. No mention of the soldiers weapons in Goya’s painting on the internet. Nothing in the art books immediately to hand.
So? Maybe I am wrong. Maybe the weapon was light, no recoil, easily handled. I went hunting for the weapon used by the Napoleonic forces. And then things got worse.
The weapon in the picture was carried by all French forces up till the middle of the 19th Century. It was mass produced and named the Charleville 1777. Interesting aside, it was used extensively in the USA until the Winchester replaced it.
It is a front loading, flint lock musket and when it is fired a huge plume of fire rises out of the weapon. Wearing that hat, the soldier would have scorched his eyebrows, if he was lucky.
I found a YouTube video of a modern French man firing a Charleville. Note the motorbike in the picture.
I slowed the video down and got this image.
The stance is more upright, the head tilted back and away from the flame which is not what the soldiers in the Goya painting are doing.
What did surprise me is the lack of recoil and little upward kick.
Manet did a painting of the execution of Maximilian in Mexico, one of Napoleons more spectacularly failed expeditions. Manet painted this as a tribute to Goya but he was more precise in his painting.
During a visit to Camps Bay Beach we stumbled across these two guys making sand sculptures. Really good looking work
We have a Cape Yellow Wood tree in the front yard and we had to trim it some time back. I kept some of the thicker branches, let them dry out and then stated carving. This owl emerged.
I love working in pastels. And yes, I know it is isn’t Christmas, but I just finished it and wanted to share it.
I wanted to enter an art competition and decided on a photo collage. I grabbed photos from my various albums and concocted an image which I called Walking into Twilight. It did not make the grade. Oh well, better luck next time
