
Fountain in Front of the Burgos Cathedral – Watercolor on Watercolor Paper ( 7th of May 2022)
L’Aurora (The Aurora) is a large Baroque ceiling fresco painted in 1614 by Guido Reni for the Casino, or garden house adjacent to the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, in Rome. I created this gif to illustrate better the geometric structure underlining Reni’s beautiful sweeping forms of gods, goddesses and angels in the glorious gold-filled dawn.
The Baroque was known for dynamic movement, triangle compositions that seem larger than life yet replace the idealism of the renaissance with something more akin to the drama of an opera (which also became hugely popular around the same time in the 17th century). Below is another of my favorite Reni paintings, Susanna and the Elders (1620-25). The Susanna painting also uses a fantastic composition with powerful axial movements galore.
When I was in art school at Pratt, we had several assignments requiring us to select an Old Master painting to break down axially. Any significant curve, line, or other shapes that define the big moves of colors or a figure in the image can be broken down this way. Our professor has us take tracing paper and we drew out the significant axial movements with different color pens or markers directly over a printout of the original painting. These exercises helped me to understand the deeper essence of composition and our class looked at Baroque paintings in particular for their use of balancing diagonals with triangles for a dynamic yet balanced and compositionally strong image. I still make these from masterworks for inspiration and historical allusions in my artwork.
This drawing is the first piece of artwork that I signed with my nickname (given to me by my friends in New Orleans), Magicko.
This is a star chart that I drew with aid of my pocket compass and my monocular hand telescope.
This is a screen shot of the Night Sky (digital version of star chart on an app I use) for the same time early on April 7th of 2021. I have improved a good bit since then, yet I thought I would post this one as I have not blogged about astronomy or making star charts with a hand telescope plus a compass.
These are from my animated project I have been working on for the last two years is finally coming together; here is a sneak peek! It is the story of a Dutch girl in the Anglo-Dutch wars (the 1650s-1670s). Astrid joins as a midship mage in Dutch Navy. I created both for more extensive sequences, yet I thought making them as separate gifs would be an exciting way to introduce some of Astrid’s abilities on social media. You can check out @theflyingdutchessoffical on IG or the Dutchess FB page or our website www.theflyingdutchess.com
I recently added some portraits to my ink wash and watercolor section, this watercolor portrait is of one of my best friends from when I lived in New Orleans. Anthony Graziano is also an incredible musician. I am very happy with how this portrait turned out.
The deck is still 4 suits of 13, modelled exactly from the standard 52-bicycle deck so it can be used for divination or for fun!
A short animated picture behind the Jack of Clubs in the deck of cards that I illustrated last year. All the cards in this deck have an emblem from a really interesting emblem book by Claude Paradin in 1557 AD. I found an amazing book about medieval/renaissance emblemata in the library that referenced his book, Devises Heroiques. I have been extremely interested in this publication ever since and I am now working on a second version of the deck. Additionally, I am coding some card games with javascript that showcase the deck, I will post a link in the next post about it. I finally got around to getting my JS and React badges on Linked-In as well.
These are some of my paintings this last week of 2020 that I have spent in the beautiful Blue Mountains of Asheville in North Carolina.
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