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

[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.