Art Rec

[sigune]

There is a first time for everything; in this case, I am offering my very first art rec. Since I discovered her work at SH Illusions, I have been an ardent admirer of chicxulub (who, I have just discovered, also goes by the name of iron___bridge). I have traced her to deviantART, where all her gorgeous pictures can be found together in one album - mmmmm... I find that there is one painting in particular to which I keep returning, trying to find out what it is that draws me to it, and that is the one I want to rec to you:

Princess

G, no warnings; it is Eileen Snape in Spinner's End.

Pictures like those make me want to take up watercolour... (Actually I bought myself a box of them yesterday, fully intending to set to work once RL allows me to.) The effects are lovely and the colours great. I also love how the artist combines the paint with beautiful, clear line work.

There is something deceptively simple about this picture, probably because its complexities are so subtly done. The composition is brilliant, with Eileen in the margin and yet eye-catching because of the bright green of her dress and bright orange of the watering can. The idea of portraying her with that can, cultivating small bits of green in brick surroundings, is just great. She is not dominated by her environment, even if the dirty cloud from the mill's chimney looks ominous and threatening.

Oh, it's just marvellous. Go and see for yourselves.

Comments

[ex-neke.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the link. :)

[veradee.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the rec. I've seen her fantastic sex-god Snape before but never knew who made it. I also like the pic of Eileen Snape very much and am just dumb-struck that there are people who can create something beautiful with something as horrible as watercolours.

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Watercolours - horrible?! I think people manage to make horrible art with any medium; surely there is nothing wrong with the kind of paint itself? Well, I don't know... I have always found it rather appealing myself, because of the transparency and brightness, and I think computer colouring doesn't compare to it in the least. mnem_art holds heaps of examples of watercolour beauty. The question is, of course, whether I'll be up to doing something decent with my own paint and brushes :/.

Sex-god Snape is delightful, isn't he? XD

[veradee.livejournal.com]

The horrible thing about watercolours is that they are based on water. Either you have so much water that you end up drenching your paper so that it gets all crinkly when it dries again, or you use as little water as possible and end up with a very thick layer of paint, where you can see every stroke of your brush.

As you can see I thought that watercolours were torture when we had to use them in school and I've never used them again since then. Your links prove that it possible to paint beautiful pictures, though. Perhaps it was me?

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Perhaps it was your material, and your teacher! If you say 'watercolour', do you mean the paint that comes in rather large, roundish, flat plastic receptacles and that children use, or the tiny square boxes that artists use? Did they give you proper paper, prepared the right way to stop it from crinkling? Much depends on how professionally your school tackled it, I'd say. (I know that in the few art classes we had, there was never enough time to teach us anything properly, and if we did use paint at all, it was of the cheapest kind.)

I think watercolours are a difficult medium (and an expensive one - the paint, heavy paper and sabre brushes don't come cheap), which is why I intend to take a few classes and see where they get me. But the paint seems very versatile too, so I think that if you master it properly, it can be a dream instead of a nightmare. We'll see :).

[veradee.livejournal.com]

You're right, we used the cheap stuff at school. My results always were very frustrating so that it never really occurred to me to look out for proper watercolours.

You only had a few arts classes? It was a regular subject at my school, like maths or biology, which means that we had it more or less throughout our entire school career.

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Lucky you! I only had art classes in my first and third year, one hour a week; small wonder they could never really teach us anything. I never learned about media or technique, let alone composition or perspective; the only bits I remember is a teacher telling me that the most important thing to develop is your own distinctive style, and the fact that I once made a collage with the wrappings of my sandwiches because I forgot to bring anything else.

I am always so envious when I read English or American novels in which students have drama classes. We had no such thing either. In fact, seeing that our school was actually rather encouraging of the arts, we spent very little time on them in the classroom.

[veradee.livejournal.com]

Your own distinctive technique? Right, but how are you supposed to do so when you've never learnt the basics?

We did speak about perspective and probably also composition. Apart from watercolours we also tried our hands at linocut, charcoal, Indian ink, not too mention crayons and wax crayons. I also remember creating collages and painting a picture in the style of Pointilism. And one highlight was to create a 'machine sculpture' like Jean Tinguely did. We also spoke about the history of painting, like Renaissance art and Pop art.

We didn't have any drama classes either. I would have hated it to be on the stage, though. We did have some music classes, but for the last three years you only could attend either music or arts.

[kaskait.livejournal.com]

That was a really wonderful. Thank you for the link.

[embossedsilver.livejournal.com]

Ooh, I like your Spinner's End! Very atmospheric.

[seaislewitch.livejournal.com]

I saw that a week or so ago and really liked it too. It's not only beautifully painted, it made me wonder about Eileen.

The picture makes me think she's accepted her situation, and may even be happy about it despite the obvious poverty. You have to wonder why a witch would choose that fate: clothes lines, chimney stacks and a Muggle husband. Any theories?

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Yes, several, but I'm saving them for my WIP of Doom ;P...

Eileen is fascinating, isn't she? At the start I imagined her as a Ravenclaw; I have switched her to Slytherin since. I look forward to writing more of her - I only have a tiny snippet so far.

It's true, she doesn't really look unhappy in the picture. I was sort of touched by the fact that she is growing plants and wears a dress in the colour of hope (or Slytherin, but I think hope because of the young shoots she has been watering). I read it as hinting to her feelings about her pregnancy.

I just can't get enough of that picture, and it is actually one of the rare instances in which I can identify and more or less adequately formulate what I like about an image and what makes it work for me.

[dolabellae.livejournal.com]

Goodness. That's lovely. Thanks for the rec!

[sscrewdriver.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the rec, I haven't seen her stuff before. I love the watercolour pollution clouds. So controlled.

[jen-deben.livejournal.com]

It's the eyes that get me; those are Snape's eyes...