“There is nothing that deceives us more than our own judgement when used to give an opinion on our own works.”
Leonardo da Vinci
Monday, 2 July 2012
Deceived by our own judgement
“There is nothing that deceives us more than our own judgement when used to give an opinion on our own works.”
Leonardo da Vinci
Monday, 25 June 2012
Celebrating 500 posts
This post is number 500 on this blog! I never thought I would get that far when I started this My French Easel blog in August 2007. First, I am sending a big thank you to everyone who follows or visit this blog. This helps me carrying on.
I had a several reasons to start this blog:
Source: background photo from NASA
I had a several reasons to start this blog:
- This motivates me to paint and create.
- It acts like a journal and I can refer to when I want.
- I like to share my painting tips.
- As a non-native English speaker, writing regularly in English is a good exercise.
I try not to look at the blog's statistics too often, but numbers show some interesting and often surprising facts.
- 199509 pageviews since the start
- 207 followers
- Post with the most page views (5,234 Pageviews): Texture in oil with painting knives
- Most used search term that led to the blog: Hokusai
This blog is not a commercial venture. I decided not to put any advertising on the site and I don’t plan to change that. I use Amazon affiliate links (and managed to buy one art book with the proceeds...), but this does not dictate the content of the blog.
A few favourite posts
Let me do that by category.
Paintings: Cable car ride for oil paintings; Dragon Gate (San Francisco) for mixed-media; River Kennet at Avebury for watercolour and Children at the river for pastel.
Recommended book: It’s hard to pick one, but the most inspiring book I read and reviewed on the blog so far is The Creative habit by Twyla Tharp.
Museum: I can’t really pick a favourite museum, however the Marmottan museum in Paris is a must see if you like Impresionnism.
Painting studio tips: two posts my readers found useful are How to open a stuck oil paint tube and How to set-up your French easel (on your own).
Art material: my vote goes to the daylight easel lamp because I can paint in the evening with it, without fear of discovering the next day that all the colours are wrong.
Monday, 18 June 2012
Wednesday, 13 June 2012
Matisse Museum – Le Cateau-Cambrésis
As I was in the North of France with my family, we went to
visit the Matisse museum in Le Cateau-Cambrésis – his birth place.
Palais Fénelon, home of the Matisse museum
The collection, exhibited in chronological order, counts 170
works. It is interesting to see the evolution of his work throughout his
career. You can view some of the works on the website of the museum (link at
the end of this post).
During the first years, when he was learning the craft in
the art studio of Gustave Moreau, Matisse’s palette was still full of earth
colours and he was also copying still life paintings by Chardin.
Matisse then explored Divisionism, after meeting Signac in Saint-Tropez
in 1904. The painting was slowly created by the juxtaposition of coloured dots
and the final effect relied on optical mixing of colours, when the painting is
look at from a distance. But Matisse found the technique too burdensome and
only kept from it the pure colours.
Another room showed works from the Fauvism period, a movement
he created with a group of painters in 1905: Marquet, Manguin, Camoin, Puy,
Derain, Vlaminck, Braque, Dufy, Friez, Valtat, Van Dongen and Rouault. The
trademark of the group was bright and pure colours used to express sentiments
rather than depict reality.
One of Matisse's sculpture in the courtyard
Then came the paintings done with flat colours and
simplified lines. Matisse was always looking for a sensation of calm and
balance in his work. A feature of the artist’s work is how he uses black: to
create lines but also in planes, as any other colours. In his writings and interviews,
he made the point that black was a colour. He even went as far as
declaring that he was using black as a "colour of light rather than a colour of obscurity".
Matisse's palette
Towards the end of his life, Matisse developed a unique
technique with gouache cut-outs to create his works. The museum has some fine
examples from this period.
Matisse also worked on the Chapelle in Vence (South of
France) that he created for the Dominican sisters between 1948 and 1951. The
museum shows several models and works specially created for this project.
On the ground floor, the museum has a large selection of
drawings and engravings by Matisse.
Nus de Dos number one by Matisse
Another aspect of Matisse’s work is the sculptures he
carved. The original plasters of the series Nus
de Dos are in the museum. And the first one is also in the garden as a
bronze sculpture (A full series of the four sculptures casted in bronze is part
of the Centre Pompidou collection in Paris).
The Matisse museum also hosts the Herbin Collection (a
geometrical abstract artist born in the North of France) as well as the Tériade
Collection (he published a number of artists’ books, including Jazz by Matisse).
The museum
Musée départemental Matisse
Palais Fénelon
59360 Le Cateau-Cambrésis
Website: http://museematisse.cg59.fr/
Technorati Tags:
Matisse, art
museum, fauvism, Divisionism, Signac, Musée
départemental Matisse, Le Cateau-Cambrésis
Tuesday, 29 May 2012
Painting dappled light
Sunny days are back in England and trees are full of leaves. The sunlight going through the trees’ foliage forms spots of light on the ground. I took some snapshots of the patterns form by the light spots on a path.
Observe these spots of light and note the following:
But why are these spots round when the holes between the leaves are not? The answer is that these round spots of lights are the sun projected on the ground. The physics is the same as for the pinhole camera.
So, if each spot of light is a projection of the sun, their shape would be different during a solar eclipse. This is correct: the spots become crescents of light.
Dapple light is a good way to bring variety to a landscape or a scene. You can selectively bring some elements of the subject under the spotlight. The difficulty is to avoid having a patchwork of colours and tone without any focus. Renoir used dapple light in an effective way in his painting Bal du moulin de la Galette.
Observe these spots of light and note the following:
- Some spots are more luminous than others;
- When the spots overlap, their intersection is more luminous;
- The light spots have a soft edge rather than a hard edge;
- Spots of lights are subject to the law of perspective and are seen as ellipsis from a distance.
But why are these spots round when the holes between the leaves are not? The answer is that these round spots of lights are the sun projected on the ground. The physics is the same as for the pinhole camera.
So, if each spot of light is a projection of the sun, their shape would be different during a solar eclipse. This is correct: the spots become crescents of light.
Image of the sun during a solar eclipse through the leaves of a tree. October 3, 2005, St Juliens, Malta – picture by User:Ellywa - Source: Wikimedia Common
Dapple light is a good way to bring variety to a landscape or a scene. You can selectively bring some elements of the subject under the spotlight. The difficulty is to avoid having a patchwork of colours and tone without any focus. Renoir used dapple light in an effective way in his painting Bal du moulin de la Galette.
Bal du moulin de la Galette by Auguste Renoir (Oil on canvas - 1876) Musée d'Orsay – Source: Wikimedia Common
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