beside the easel

The Victory of Joshua over the Amalekites, ca.1624 Born on June 15, 1594, Nicolas Poussin was another giant of French painting whose attention to composition, line and color make him easily identifiable as one of the greats. I wanted to do a post of him earlier but ran out of time due to a new work schedule (better late than never, I always say!) Poussin is unique in that he could more than hold his own in Classical, landscape and historical painting...his name is synonymous with harmony and perfection, which would have a massive influence on French art from the Academic style right up until the Cubists. The painting above is an extremely busy composition, and very atypical of Poussin's usual balanced, quiet subject matter. In this particular battle, Joshua and the Hebrews are determined to completely destroy the Amalekites , a ruthless tribe who were considered even worse than the Philistines, who attacked the Hebrews shortly after they fled Egypt. So, under commandment by Go...

Study for Transfiguration, 2011 Last year I decided to do a study of Raphael's St. Andrew from the Transfiguration using coloured pencil for the first time. It's a highly underrated medium for drawing. Rich colours can be built up in layers yet with a softness of tone that doesn't smear like pastel, yet from a distance has the same qualities as a painting. I think if the Old Masters had coloured pencil in their day, they would have made use of it in their own studies. They made extensive use of red and black chalk...this would have given them full-colour without wasting a single drop of paint. In this study I was less patient than typical color pencil artists. Normally, lights are built up slowly and then darks, but I decided to work from dark to light then erase my highlights to create them. Hey, it works. I used Prismacolor in this study but I found Faber-Castel's Polychromos set to be even more rich with pigment and better selection of colours. I buy my colours...

Heads and hands of the Apostles, ca. 1518-1520 Head of a Woman,ca. 1517-20 If there is one artist I wish I could go back in time and meet with...well, there would be too many to mention, but Raphael is the guy I could see sitting down to chat with you over wine and bread. His reputation as well-liked, amiable, smart, and a ladies man puts him in a unique category--Michelangelo was introverted and brooding, easily irascible, Leonardo highly intelligent and easily distracted by his own curiosities, but Raphael is the dude. Combining the knowledge of both, he forms that holy trinity of the Renaissance genius. I admit at first I didn't quite care for his paintings, but after my uncle from Italy bought me a book on him in Italian, Raphael grew on me fast. His draftsmanship had few equals in his day, and his compositions are Classically perfect. It is interesting that he has been adored and reviled over the centuries, and his life is the great tragedy of art history: he died on his...

Drawing is not the form; it is the way of seeing the form. Degas A male nude from behind, c.1630 Gian Lorenzo Bernini In this blog I talk about painting but the importance of drawing cannot be understated of course, and I believe we can learn just as much from studying their techniques of line and strokes as we can from brushstrokes...more in most cases as the drawing is more expressive and intimate. It reveals the personality and character of the artist. The above drawing apparently comes from the period of Bernini's teaching at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome, one of four from the exact same model. This drawing is fairly big for a study, at 55.6 x 42cm (21 x 16 inches). Consider Michelangelo's study for Libyan Sibyl , is only 28.9 x 21.4 cm (11 3/8 x 8 7/16 inches), a small study for a fresco which would be painted several times larger than life size. I can only guess that Bernini was teaching a big class and that maybe his work was on display for students to stud...