Unfinished Portrait

During my last semester in college, I was doing a series of Da Vinci inspired paintings and copies for general practice. This unfinished portrait was a detail of the rightmost angel in "Virgin on the Rocks" (the later version now in the National Gallery in London) seen here:


But while working on it, I realized the painting looked very much like my mother in her early twenties. Just to confirm it, I brought it to my family and they agreed. It's not like I carry around a youthful photo of her, so I'm not sure what triggered in my subconscious to make it this way. It remains unfinished to this day because now I'm just not sure what to do with it.

Do I correct it enough to finish the practice? Or do I run with the idea and paint a sepia-toned portrait of my mother as an angel?

Seems oddly Freudian...

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.

Pace

My week's been a bit rough. Several events, good and bad, came up and I'm still digesting a lot of it. So forgive me if this post and the next few are more sentimental than usual.

I originally started this painting last year as a way to study oil paints on my own time. I remember being frustrated with skin tone in particular. The subject is Leonardo Da Vinci's sketch of Pleasure and Pain. Bridging his sketches into oil was a fine challenge I set up for myself. Even better, my oil teacher used the magic word "can't" (as in "you can't make an oil painting out of it if you love the sketch too much") and that got me motivated.

But I set it aside after awhile because I knew I needed to learn more before I could do it justice. That is, until last week.

A very close friend of my family fell ill. Cancer. He basically mentored my mother back when she first came to America, so I've known him my entire life. They built a company from nothing together which later became one of the top ten in its industry. It was later bought by Old Williamsburgh Candle for a hefty sum, but without his company Harold always seemed a little sadder.

Even though it's been over 15 years, running around the factory on my "sick" days are still very important memories. Every once in awhile, Harold would bring me an old toy and I would cherish it.

When I heard the news, I didn't know what to do with myself.

So I started painting.

I think in such a situation when I felt utterly unable to help someone important to me, I ended up trying to control the painting instead. The initial earnest gestures are there, but now they are overlaid with a little more understanding and patience.

I don't intend to give it to Harold. I don't even think I could finish it in time. But when I asked my mother what I should paint for him, she told me I didn't have to. I just had to be there.

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...