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Friday, April 29, 2011

Raven, Coyote

Spent the morning at the Maine Wildlife Park in Gray, Maine.   This was only my second trip there, though it was a bit sleepier than I remembered. The sun was so bright it was difficult to see some of the birds from behind their cages.  Not the best for taking references photos but an enjoyable walk all the same. 











Thursday, April 21, 2011

Squirrel, Redder


This is the latest image of this one as it is nearing the home stretch.   The squirrel is quite a bit more saturated and leaves and branches added for a little depth and context.   Notice the difference

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

UNE Pics




Here's a few images from last week's opening at the University of New England's Art Gallery.   The show was packed, inside and out, with both art and artists.    It's up until July 20 in case you've missed it.   Thanks to curator Nancy Davidson for inviting me to be a part of this wonderful exhibition. 

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Shirt Change


Changed the color on the body/shirt on this one once again, with the latest version shown on the right. I feel like I'm about ready to call this one quits but, then again, you never know.   A link to the previous version is here.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Parmigianino

I attribute my current and abundant love of violet to one painting, "Virgin Mary with Baby and the Saints Margaret, Girolamo and Petronio." I had the privilege of seeing it as part on an undergraduate research trip to Italy quite a while back.  There were several things that struck me about it, and that have stayed with me through the years.  First, it is rarely reproduced and I stumbled across it for the first time in person.  The figures are elegant and beautifully modeled, but Saint Margaret is most exquisitely rendered in the foreground right. My mind was blown by the amount of violet in her cheek, which I recall being in delicate contoured in slightly raised ribbons of paint.  I had never seen so much violet used in flesh before.  A little unnatural, but oh so brilliant!  Another curiosity of the painting was that the circular halos of some of the figures (I can't recall exactly which or how many) were incised deeply into the panel itself, and then painted over.  This, in addition to the violet, remains invisible on the reproduction on the museum's website, which I liberally color-adjusted here to jive more with my memories.

Parmigianino, most commonly known for his very conspicuous "Madonna of the Long Neck" was one of the of the Mannerist era following the Renaissance.  For generations of art history, this period was viewed as a fall from the naturalism of the high Renaissance of Raphael and Leonardo to a more artificial mode of painting where artists looked to other art and artists as reference.   Followed by the Protestant Reformation, and the austere realist paintings produced by Baroque artists in reaction, the Mannerist era was viewed by many as a bit of a puzzle, a decadent blip in the march of four centuries of realism before Modernism.

More on Parmigianino:
Bologna National Museum
Wikipedia
Web Gallery of Art

Saturday, April 2, 2011

Yawn (Clay 2)


Here's another imagined clay sketch, of someone yawning.   I was told in some feedback about the previous scuplture that these little busts seem to be quite large on the photos so I included a pencil this time for scale.