Medusa by Lucien Levy-Dhurmer

This is the most AWESOME picture I've ever seen of Medusa!  I found it in the Musee d' Orsay in Paris.  I've never heard of this artist and plan to do some research on him.  In the meantime, enjoy.

His name is Lucien Levy-Dhurmer, 1865-1953.  Their collection held quite a few very striking, uh, portraits, if you will.  All of them gave you a definite mood.

This one is by the same artist, and once again, gives you a particular feeling.  He was very expressive.  Like!

I'm BAACK!  It's been a long sabbatical from you!  The summer has been extremely busy and we've been gone, in fact, finally this week I've been able to start digging through art supplies and ideas and working in my studio.  Here's one little corner. 

Note the absinthe candies on my lamp.  We just got back from Europe and I bought them somewhere in Paris, I think - oh yeah, at the Musee d' Orsay!  Of course, that's where they have a lot of Impressionist works.

 Note Degas' Absinthe Drinker below; a controversial picture in its own rite.  Absinthe was a green alcohol of which many artists of that day partook.  It was sometimes referred to as The Green Fairy.

 

 

A Visit to the Louvre in Paris

We just got back from a three-country European tour, with our last stop in Paris.  This is a short video I took just to give the flavour of what it's like walking through the Louvre, and how many walk WITH you as you progress!  What a museum!  And yes, we were allowed to take videos and pictures, as long as you didn't use a flash.  That surprised me as most museums don't permit this anymore.

Most people understand you couldn't see everything they have in less than a month.  I do know that I walked my little legs off on the only day I could go, and barely scratched the surface.  As this was our second time there, I knew what I was up against and simply enjoyed the day, picking out a few particular must-sees, and enjoying surprises as they came along.

Here I am getting ready to enter the Louvre.  It's a big, U-shaped building which comprises, as I understand, eight miles of galleries.  I believe it.

 What you see here is under the glass pyramid, once you've entered.  It gives access to all the wings and levels, and is a beautiful sight in itself.

 I took this shot of the pyramid and its surrounding pools as I sat on a balcony having lunch.

 This was under one of the lesser pyramids.  They bring great light into the halls below, and are so sumptuous to behold.

 Yep.  There it is.  Right... THERE!

We just got back from England, Germany and France and I'm excited to do some posting on the art and museums, among other things, that we experienced.  We have some out-of-country company coming tomorrow; I'll start adding things next week when things calm down.

Maxfield Parrish and Student Work

Couldn't resist putting this lovely, textured gator up.  One of my young students did it today.  We studied Maxfield Parrish and the various ways he'd prepare for his paintings; building a model house and setting it on a mirror, set rocks and gravel on mirrors to use as subjects for those awesome mountains he painted, etc.
After that, we worked with modeling clay.  First they sketched out ideas of what they wanted to do in clay.  After their juices were flowing, they build lovely things like this alligator.  We set them up under a lamp and darkened the room so they could see the shadows on their pieces, and they drew them again - so they could remember!  Tons of fun.  Hard to get them out of the classroom once our time was up.

Of course this is one of his most famous images, very beautiful.

This one is lovely, lovely.  I don't know the background on this particular one, but it's likely that he built a small model and set it on a mirror, as he did many other times with similar images.

And here's one of his mountain scenes.  Takes my breath away.  Maxfield Parrish is one of my top ten favorite artists.

Miscellaneous Art Comments

Hello, Wonderful People!
It's been a little while since I've checked in so I wanted to let you know what I've been doing.  Still alive, thank You, Lord!

Worked the seventh annual  Woodlands Waterway Arts Festival, http://www.woodlandsartsfestival.com/. 
The weather was seriously windy but we had a nice, partial cloud cover and it was really fun.  My job was artist relations, my favorite, which involved meeting the artists, giving them food and drinks and breaking them so they could leave their booths for breaks.  Let's face it, one of my gifts is working with people.  I love people!  The artists were from all over the country - Wisconsin, Washington, Connecticut, South Carolina, lots from Florida, etc.  I believe this was the biggest festival we've had, and read somewhere that last year we had 16,000 attendees.  Pretty sure we had more this year.  It was really fun to be back as the last year or two I've been out of the country when the fest was scheduled.  Couldn't do it this year, so it was GREAT to be here during the fest!

Our gallery had a lot of volunteers working the festival, as did a lot of other organizations.  It takes a lot of people to put something like this on.

It's also 'that time of year' for homeschool teachers, and for this art teacher. The schedules for the next school year are set for all three places where I teach, the HIS Classes, www.hisclasses.org, the Training Center Classes, www.trainingcenterclasses.com, and The Woodlands Art League, www.woodlandsartleague.org.  The first two will be weekly classes that run the entire school year, and the last one at the gallery will be summer classes.  If you're interested in the summer classes, they're all going to be different levels of metal embossing, VERY fun.  Anyway, this has kept me really busy, too, fielding questions about classes, open houses and taking registrations.

In my current classes, we're doing some serious hands-on stuff, i.e., preparing portfolios, self-portraits, metal embossing, glass painting, clay and metal/plaster sculpture.  With all this going on, I haven't had a chance to paint myself!  I've done preliminary research for my next two paintings and hope to be able to start sketching out the first drawings soon.  I've also got a self-portrait that I need to continue working on since I made all my highschoolers do it.  Haven't done one for a little while, so it's time.

Okay, there you have it!  More later!

Seahorse Part 6 - Finished!

 Well, although the flu is still going through our house (four out of five of us, with a LONG recovery) I finally finished my seahorse.  I'm pretty pleased with it. 

Here's a detail of part of the tail holding onto the kelp.  As you can see, in many places you can see right through the seahorse - wanted to lend that aire of mystery and give people pause.  I've gone from the reds and oranges to oranges and yellows as the background has changed from blues to violets at the bottom.  You can also see that some of the seahorse's tail is now more neutral colors.

This is the lower body where the oranges really kicked in.  I love the texture of jumbled lines forming the horse and the contrast between that and the iridescent leaves and the background colors as I was going for some shadows.

Oh, that I was a better photographer!  The colors just aren't that good here.  An example is that the seahorse's head is bright violet.  I guess you'll just have to come down to the gallery to see it for yourself - there's no substitute for the real thing!

The next step is to let it dry for several more days.  Then a light spray of varnish, a day or two more for that to dry, then a nice, brushed-on coat of varnish.  As that one will be thicker, I'll let it dry for about a week before I take it to my framers.  It'll be just in time for a couple spring shows, I think.

By the way, the picture measures about 20"x24".  Just got it matted and framed today.  When you get to this size, unfortunately, there's a huge price jump in framing.