9th March - How to Look at a Painting

I loved Justin Paton's 'Ten Good Reasons' because the way he reads a painting is quite inspiring, it makes me want to have his words as my own. He is so in depth and so passionate, his passion for art really comes through. You can tell when reading it that he knows what he is talking about, he writes about his top ten favourite artworks and ofcoarse why he likes them. He notes great things about them like actual painting techniques and how a certain painting can look almost 3-d from how well it is painted. He also talks about how the painting can generate ideas and concepts from the meaning behind them, the meaning of a painting can be just as alluring as the painting itself. I particularly like how in number 11 he talks about how "passion for a particular painting doesn't always have to be underwritten by a reason" and that there's nothing wrong with saying you like a painting just because.

So my top artworks are as follows:

1) Vjekoslav Nemesh, Blue Orchid

This is one of Nemesh's latest paintings and is absolutely gorgeous, the colours and technique are amazing, to be honest if I could paint like this my life would be complete. I absolutely love his work it is so passionate and dreamy an surreal, it isn't quite abstract but this technique really intrigues people. It is so unique, he paints how he feels, he doesn't have to think about any reason why he should paint what he paints but does because he feels it. Which I believe is a great state of mind for an artist armed with paint to be in. I have tried his technique of painting which is scraping paint onto a canvas and using dry brushing to blend the colours softly together, but as evident in this painting he sometimes leaves the dry brushing which makes the painting very sharp and contrasts the colours. I mostly love the theme of fantasy it presents, like a getaway you can escape into it.

2) Audrey Kawasaki, Hyakki Yakou

Hyakki Yakou, Night Parade, is a great example of Kawasaki's work. I love her style of mixing elements of beauty and serene, pouty expressions with disturbing images of animals, objects or like in this one, monsters. In others I like she has incorporated skeletons of animals or a gruesome human heart in the transparent chest of a beautiful young woman. I like the dark theme but also her medium, she uses oil and graphite on wood. Personally I love this kind of art with its disturbing quality, it really interests me and how it contrasts with the beautiful aspect. In this respect I must mention her motif of bird wings, she incorporates birds and bird wings alot which adds to the beauty. I have a thing for wings which is why I used dreaming of flight for my theme for year 13 art last year, so Kawasaki was a perfect artist model for that and I still look up all her new art now.

3) Victoria Frances, Angel de la muerte

Victoria Frances, again, paints beautiful women. This time though, she portrays not a disturbing quality but a dark, classically gothic quality. It is a fantasy escape again which attracts me, I love the dark theme, it's beautiful and inspiring. This kind of art is also very contemporary and probably more likeable to teenagers and young adults. It also kind of goes along with this dark, vampire, werewolf, van helsing fad going around. (Not Twilight, I don't like Twilight) And also this painting depicts angel wings which definately makes me love it, the kitten is a cute too though I do fail to see its relevance. This artist is definately one of thoses artists that doesn't paint to be deep and meaningful, rather she paints women in gothic, corset dress clothing with long, beautiful hair in gothic castles, as vampires, as witch's, as voodoo priestesses etc... and turns them into picture books as stories, she even takes photos of herself and paints herself.Basically i like her work because it is beautiful, her painting is flawless and I love the gothic theme.

4) Zindy S. D. Nielsen, Her Protector

Zindy is a very romance based artist, alot of her drawings are very romantic like this one. I love the way they are holding each other close, by looking at this you know he really is her protector, like the angel he is. What I love most about her drawings is how real they look, she does do some drawings where she brings in the dark element and she has alot of drawings that show emotion in facial expressions and poses. I really admire her drawing skills mostly and how they so closely resemble their photographic counterparts.

5) Lara Jade, Smoke and Ashes

Lara Jade is a portrait photographer I discovered on deviantart.com, she does commercial photography as well as conceptual, fashion and beauty. I love her fashion photography because of the beautiful use of light, costume, makeup and scenery, it is something I am very interested in doing. This photograph i love especially, I love black and white portraits and i love the smoky texture of the image. i get the impression she is exhaling smoke against glass so because of her netted hat I can picture her in a smoky bar in the past smoking and drinking brandy. It can be a cozy image or a sad one as she is alone.

This kind of photograph is something I would like to experiment with, perhaps create a series of black and white portraits trying to convey this smokey bar kind of atmosphere.