The Google Art Project is kind of like Google Maps, but with hundreds and hundreds of works of art from galleries around the world. It’s… well… you’ll just have to go check it out.
(Thanks to Craig, my incredibly resourceful father-in-law, for the find.)
The good news about The Isle of the Dead by Arnold Böcklin is that it’s beautiful, and that there are five different versions of it, each one of which is beautiful in its own way.
The bad news is that Adolf Hitler liked this painting. He bought it, actually. And Lenin had a print of it in his office.
Yeah.
It’s kinda scary to think that I saw and liked a painting that spoke deeply to both Hitler and Lenin. But be honest… didn’t you like it too? A little?
A Bierstadt for a rainy day. Look at that composition. A circle? For a storm?
Genius, I say.
(via Art Inconnu)
I need to learn about light. Artistically, I live in a world of outlines. Someone help me escape from wireframes and into the atmosphere.
With a large, wrapped canvas given as a birthday gift from my rockin’ wife, I have now begun to really work on Wisdom and Folly Cry Out to the Simple.
Stage 1:
Stage 2 (about a half hour later):
The blue is there because I don’t actually know how to backlight something, and I wanted to get paint down on canvas rather than leave empty space which I’d be afraid to fill in later. This way at least I can paint over it with confidence.
For those of you who don’t know the story, this painting has been a pet project of mine for over a year. I’m only now trying it with real paint, rather than sketches or digitally. (Well… I did try it once before with real paint, and it was a disaster.) So that you can critique it helpfully, what I’m shooting for is a small figure in the middle of a town, with gigantic figures whose bodies are open doors … one leading up and to the left, towards heaven, and one leading down and to the right, towards the grave.
Generally speaking, I think I like the direction this is going… having Folly seated, I think it makes it MUCH more dynamic than the other two standing-room-only pictures. (And it’s more biblically accurate!)
I desperately need your help, though. If you have a scrap of artistic ability and human decency, and can see me setting myself up for a fall anywhere (too primary, wrong light source, anything), please offer constructive criticism now! I’d much rather find out at this stage than 20 hours of work from now.
Oh, and if anyone knows a good resource on how to paint backlighting, I could REALLY use that, too.
Wow. The Prisoner, by Yaroshenko, is beautiful. But then I’m a sucker for some chiaroscuro. Memo to me: Go back to the Tretyakov at some point and see this.
(via Art Inconnu)
Here’s the best possible explanation of cubism I can offer. It’s looking at a subject (in this case, Picasso’s Guitar Player) through time, and from multiple directions. I’ve just picked out one or two of the things to look at in this painting… I’ll bet you can find lots more. (Hint: imagine you’re walking around the guy.)
Like.
(Via Art Inconnu.)
Hard to find a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon than this.
Progress:
Ain’t this just how it feels sometimes?
(via Lines and Colors)
