Envy

"Make her with her face covered by a mask of fair seeming; show her as wounded in the eye by a palm branch and by an olive-branch, and wounded in the ear by laurel and myrtle, to signify that victory and truth are odious to her[...] Make her heart gnawed by a swelling serpent."
- Leonardo da Vinci on the personification of Envy

Da Vinci had like ten more attributes to her but the mask, branches, and serpent are the ones I recall easiest. Envy is my first muse because genuine jealousy was really what made me want to get better at art. It's hard to be surrounded by artists in both textbooks and studios and not think, "I want that. I want to do that. I am willing to dedicate years of my life to be able to do that." So I picked up a pencil and started.

Kinnaree - WiP 2

A new year is ushered in and all I get is stress. Yay adulthood!

I kid, really, but mostly I've been surprised by how little time I have to myself now. Most of the day goes towards work and with that means less time for art. Any time I do have for art I genuinely have to fight for. And I do not lose fights, thank you very much.

Last year I was working on a kinnaree painting but eventually hit a dead end with it. Recently though I picked it back up to rework the idea. Now this is the first panel of a triptych, the composition of which will be borrowing heavily from this Hiroshige print. I'm still working out their anatomy since I have to maintain a balance of realistic bird-legs while keeping them graceful and dignified. Looking at them and thinking "fat duck" kind of defeats the purpose.


I haven't really set a deadline for this, but rather I was hoping the triptych layout would force me to work on landscapes and objects more than the figure. We'll see how well that turns out.

Experiment - thin acrylic

Experiment - Day 2

Transferred to 16 x 20 canvas and changed orientation. Still debating acrylic v. oil...


I think her expression somehow became more... kind? Yeah, I'll run with that.

Something Old, Something New

I have a terrible habit of leaving artwork at not quite "finished." So in an attempt to fix this, I'm going to be trying out a new thing to bring together my drawing and painting styles. The sketch is a rough concept I'm using for this experiment.

Next few days will be pushing it as much as possible with progress posted daily.

Mini Masterpieces

When I'm feeling particularly off some days and want to do art but not think too much (especially recently with my week-long sickness), I usually end up doing miniature copies of famous paintings. I'm pretty sure this isn't how most people would think to use an art history degree, but it's fun and doesn't use a lot of paint. May also make me blind in the process. I primarily use my smallest brushes and a couple of pins for these.

This one, Thomas Eakins' Gross Clinic, is still in development, but it's been a fun challenge just because of the number of figures in it. I particularly like that Dr. Gross' forehead is a big shiny white spot in a somber and dark surgery room. I'm not usually a big fan of American art, but Thomas Eakins won me over when the professor talked about how he would write letters to colleagues about the ridiculously hard time he had making the jump from drawing to oil painting.

I can't help but be charmed by famous artists who shared the same problems even a hundred years before. Art changes and evolves, but now just as always, the art student must go through the same motions and frustrations.

Kinnaree - Work in Progress

A kinnari/kinnaree/kinnara is mythical creature with the top half of a human, usually a woman, and lower half of a bird (often cited as "swan" in English-translated literature but pictorial evidence suggests otherwise) They describe themselves as thus:

We are everlasting lover and beloved. We never separate. We are eternally husband and wife; never do we become mother and father. No offspring is seen in our lap. We are lover and beloved ever-embracing. In between us we do not permit any third creature demanding affection. Our life is a life of perpetual pleasure.

In Thai mythology, they are akin to angels or muses, flying between the human and mystical world and being the very ideal of song and beauty.

Traditionally, they look like this:



Just getting to the base idea and pose here was more exhausting than I'd like to admit. I wanted to definitely keep the kinnaree's lower half as a bird even though contemporary trend has her sporting human legs more and more often. I could go on and on about the anatomy problems that comes with a woman with wings on her hips and bird legs, but let's just say there's a reason you don't see ostriches sit in chairs...