Month: April 2018
Az Zeroing in
Still Life with a Twist ~Z~
Today’s post was planned as ‘Zipping to a close with Zeal’ and the results of some painting. Zod’s Law (being a more polite phrase than with an S), since my last post for ~Y~ my energy was zapped to zero and pain levels zoomed. I spent most of Sunday having many extra zzzs and was too unwell for painting or drawing today too.
So the twist for today with my still life is that I am presenting precisely ZILCH in the way of new art.
I suppose I could have left it at that with the previous sentence, but to at least be pictorial about it:
So hey, I brought new art to my post after all – and the ZEKE filter in MSPhotos gives it an extra little raZZamataZZ.
I suppose if I’d had the sense I was born with, I’d have decided along the way to simply print a photographic still life and put that in a frame and never mind the extra effort needed to make a painting. But that would somehow be missing the point.
Anyway, I haven’t entirely abandoned the idea of painting, and we’ll have to wait and see what arrives with my Reflections post on Monday 7th May. Apologies for any disappointment (although you must have seen it coming, if you’ve been reading along the way of my A to Z posts).
One final glimpse into historical artists who painted still life:
Father and son, Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664) and Juan de Zurbarán (1620-1649) were accomplished Spanish painters in Seville. Francisco de Zurbarán is best known for his paintings of Saints and religious figures, but also made a few paintings of still life, two examples shown below:
Juan de Zurbarán apprenticed in his father’s studio and he is believed to have worked collaboratively on some of his father’s paintings. He was however primarily a painter of still-life subjects. His life was cut short at 29 years of age when he and several of his brothers were killed having contracted plague during the 1949 epidemic in Seville. Two examples of his work are shown below:
If you’ve been taking part I hope you’ve enjoyed the A to Z Challenge. If you’ve been reading, thank you for your time and thanks to everyone who’s hit the like or left comments, your support has been much appreciated.
Zipping to a close then, until next time with Reflections (May 7th) and hopefully…
~one final reveal~
MMPC#157
My entry for the ‘two for one’ prompt hosted via https://drkottaway.com/2018/04/23/mundane-monday-157/
Az Yonder Yesteryears
Still Life with a Twist ~Y~
‘Y and Y not’ was my planned title until I reached here to write and decided my alternative title to accompany another painting of mine from the past.
In April 2010 I spent some time back at my childhood home with my Mum. As the weather was fine and warm we visited a local seaside town for a day out together with my youngest. We talked a lot about my Dad, remembering days at the beach we or they had enjoyed before he died, fifteen years previously. During the afternoon I collected a few found objects from the beach, including some seashells that I later made a painting of during May 2010, and that made in a way as remembrance of my father. I can hardly believe 8 years have passed so soon since that day at the beach and the 23 years since my father died seems to have flown in the blink of an eye.
This image (shown below) has been previously published, with my permission, by a friend who added the border and copyright text to his screenshot of my photo. I’m yet to find my original but do still have my painting here somewhere, but it’s quicker to use this version. I’d been yearning to use this painting as a background to a new still-life arrangement, but that will have to wait…
Copyright: Colette Bates. 2010, (2015 via ‘from Corner2Corner’, I assert origination of this painting, Colette B., The Wishing Well, copyright 2018. Fair Use for personal and educational use only (as per UK Law).
I was tempted to start drawing and/or painting something around a Y shaped branch: I have one saved outside getting very soggy with rain, but found one to hand indoors. Then I remembered it doesn’t really fit well with my overall topical theme for this month. But it maybe solved another challenge entry, I’ll be posting that next.
I’ll just give a very quick mention to some artists I had a quick look at for today’s art history perusal. Assuming the name Jan to be pronounced as ‘Yan’ in these cases, Jan Jansz Treck (1606-1652), Jan Philip van Thielen (1618-1667) and Jan Jansz den Uyl the Elder (1595/96-1639) were all highly accomplished Flemish/Dutch still life painters, usually of flowers.
However I also found Adja YUNKERS (1900-1983) and although listed as an American abstract painter/printmaker, he was born in the Russian Empire and also travelled to live and work in Europe before settling in the U.S. in 1947. One of his works I was particularly taken with is an abstract image titled ‘Dead Bird’, 1947. Lisa YUSKAVAGE (born 1962) is a contemporary artist living and working in New York. Her painting ‘Night Flowers’, 1999, caught my attention, briefly. Both images (and oodles more) can be found at MoMA.org
Yes, I’m muddling along this weekend, and hopefully will be in good time with a final something new for ~Z~ on Monday. Yay!
How’s YOUR final weekend of April going? Are YOU nearing the A to Z finish line? Leave me your link in a comment if I haven’t made it yonder to your posts yet and I’ll be there as soon as possible.
TBR – Ten more Blogs from the A to Z Challenge
I fell a little behind with blog-hopping toward the end of this week while having wi-fi issues, but hopefully will catch up again soon enough. I’ve found my round-up list of 50 useful in keeping up with visiting better, without getting lost in the Reader or distracted by other things in my email notifications – although I am definitely missing some of my regular reading visits!
Anyway, I’m adding some new blogs I’ve had a quick visit to and fancy reading more at, as a To Be Read list, for next week, starting as soon as I’m up to date with other reading:
- https://thedreamgirlwrites.wordpress.com/ [= ongoing fiction]
- https://faeriembassy.wordpress.com/ [quite long posts, miscellaneous]
- https://cheryllennox.blogspot.co.uk/ [quite quick reads, textile art images]
- http://lisa-musingsofamiddle-agedmom.blogspot.co.uk/ [=travels in Israel]
- http://www.kridwyn.com [=tongue twisters]
- https://onomasticsoutsidethebox.wordpress.com/ [=medieval names]
- http://yenforblue.blogspot.co.uk/ [= miscellaneous]
- https://jenseriously.com/ [=Mother Goose nursery rhymes ]
- https://invisible-no-more.com/ [=health]
- https://nydamprintsblackandwhite.blogspot.co.uk/ [=author’s own characters]
There are so very many blogs in this challenge I’m sure it’s not humanly possible to read all of them – and I’m not an avid fiction reader, so in the main I’m avoiding those types of postings, although I will make the effort to see a few more from that category once I’ve had a good rest.
Az ‘Xploration and ‘Xperimenting
Still Life with a Twist ~X~
As might be expected, finding art history examples for the letter ‘X’ seemed unlikely. However, I found an excellent still life work as XYLOGRAPHIC print by Pēteris Upītis, titled “Thistle”, (1942). This was exhibited last summer 2017 at the National Library of Latvia and can be seen at this link: https://lnb.lv/en/xylography-exhibition-engraving-wood. XYLOGRAPHY is a specific type of wood-cut engraving for the purpose of block printing. It appears to have been brought to Europe around the 13th century from China, where it had been in use many centuries earlier for printing fabrics (ie. silk) and later for printing onto paper.
I haven’t experimented with art this month as much as I might have liked, but I have been exploring plenty. Earlier this month I suggested I might even use my board and chalks, as crude and clumsy as that might seem, to use things intended for child’s play. I’d left my board with this drawing unfinished…
So I extended that drawing very quickly to make this…
And really enjoyed seeing the ghostly effect once it was ‘rubbed out’ (shown below):
I really quite like that these drawings have no existence in real time and space, having been extincted by erasure. They do of course have a virtual existence in digital space and now in online space too. (I could have used artist’s soft pastels and black paper, but chose not to.)
The quick drawing below, although naiive, and inaccurate, was a really useful excercise in observing the shape and surfaces of the crystal clock I selected as potential still-life object a few posts ago. It didn’t leave a ghost image, perhaps because it was drawn on a chalky layer that remained after wet-wiping the previous images.
‘Xactly what I might be making my final image of or from remains undecided, even at this late stage. ‘Xasperating as it is, there are still a small few things I wanted to find as they’d be really useful AND of course, I really wanted to get out and buy flowers, ‘xcessive as that might be. ‘Xcusing myself for ‘xhaustion (and I’m sure I’m not the only one really feeling that!)
X marks the spot apparently, if only I had the map…!
Az Wending my Way
Still Life with a Twist ~W~
Whizzing through here with a super-quick post for ‘W’ whilst I’ve been delayed by other issues …
I had planned to show a couple of small watercolours (2009) and maybe even washing-up (from way back when). They all have to wait … Maybe rather than updating this post I’ll just post an AZ extra on Sunday’s rest day to make up for wrestling with woes and whatnots and stop wringing my conscience.
Jan WEENIX (1642?-1719), is the only still-life painter I came across so far for today’s letter W. I’m sure there must be more. I was interested in one of his paintings appearing to have a painting as a background, but his still life are all dominated by dead animals and birds, so I didn’t want to bring those images here to my blog.
So, I looked wider, to still life photography, and discovered Edward WESTON (1886-1958). There are two beautiful still life type photographs made by him at http://edward-weston.com/edward-weston/ one titled ‘Lily and Glass’, 1939 and the other ‘Cabbage Leaf’, 1931.
What no images? Well, I haven’t photographed anything ready so left with what’s to hand on my hard-drive, I wondered the following doodle reminded me a little of a painting by Henri Fantin-Latour, simply titled Roses, but being mainly white and light-coloured ones, if you want to look for it on Wikipedia, where I’d first found another painting by him that I’d wondered on commenting on here, it has a long title starting ‘White Roses…’; he painted some gorgeous white peonies too, but that’s only titled Peonies, so…
Maybe I’ll tell you this drawing below is titled ‘With Roses’ – and it was inspired by real flowers at the time. Yes, I still have flowers on my mind – and this doodle always reminds me of being almost the shape of the human brain, almost enough…
Well, there went another day with the A to Z and a long weekend to look forward to while the challenge draws to a close, with workspace resolved for painting (yes I found my paints!) and mind whirring with ideas of all sorts of ways of whiling May away with art.
The Wishing Well 