Mistress of happiness and bounty

Beloved Bastet,
mistress of happiness and bounty,
twin of the Sun god,
slay the evil that afflicts our minds as you slay the serpent Apep.
With your graceful stealth anticipate the moves
of all who perpetrate cruelties
and stay their hands against the children of light.
Grant us the joy of song and dance,
and ever watch over us
in the lonely places in which we must walk.

Oil on canvas, 40x30cm
(click on image to enlarge)

Oy vey, Zoidberg

A portrait of Dr. John A. Zoidberg, by far the greatest alien character ever.
Also to celebrate my return to oil painting.



Oil on cardboard, 24 x 18 cm

Reflections

Felicia has a natural talent for modeling, she is quickly becoming my favourite subject. She also provides a good reason for using pure ivory black, a beautiful colour that unfortunately I seldom mix on my palette - its strength takes over too easily on the others.


Oil on cardboard, 18x24cm
(Click on image to enlarge)

Here she is resting upon my piano, below a M.C. Escher woodcut, the Red Horsemen. The double reflections - of Felicia upon the piano, and the red and white horsemen - happened by chance.

It's the art: Felicia

This is the smallest oil painting I made since I went back to the paintbrushes about 5 years ago. It is a portrait of Felicia, our cat. For some reasons I tend to look down on small formats, as if they are not worth the effort. So it takes me forever to complete a painting, I am not able to finish more than 2 or 3 per year.

Oil on cardboard, 18x24cm (Click on image to enlarge)

Then I read Karin Jurick's "One paint a day" blog, which struck me with its freshness and original perception of everyday event. Karin's paintings are of a small size - in general 15x15 cm, and they have a zen-like immediacy that make them look as if they were painted with a few, spotless strokes. And they are done in few hours!

So I decided to test myself with a smaller format, still it took me about 3 days to complete it and I am far away from Karin's level. Quite an interesting exercise though, I will experiment more on this.

It's the art: Clara's portrait

This time I wanted to study the techniques that Albrecht Durer used in his painting, following the instructions I found in Joseph Sheppard's "How to paint like the old masters".

Albrecht Durer is one of the great masters I like most, and the picture begun from a solid, accurately sketched drawing in Indian ink, to be coloured with layers of colors. This increases my confidence, because when the layers of colours start to grow and the underlying sketch is gone my painting gets a bit messy.


Once the portrait was completed I was not satisfied with the yellow ocra background, and decided to add Pimpa, the comics character that Clara liked most. But still, despite my efforts, this is quite different from Albrecht Durer. What will be his secret?

(Oil on Canvas, 40x50cm - click on image to enlarge)

It's the art: Clara down the hill

Sometimes the best approach to photo retouch is to start from a underexposed, blurry picture and paint a new one. Missing details will be completed with the good vibrations created remembering the joy of a perfect day in Champleve, a hamlet of Valtournenche, just outside the cross-country ski track.

Oil on carboard, 30x24cm (click on image to enlarge)

And painting in this mood is a fast, exact and immediate process where every brushstroke just naturally fits into the picture like a perfect jigsaw puzzle.

It's the art: the tricky cyclamins

Drawing flowers leaves me always a slightly uncomfortable, because they are a bit cheesy as subject. But they are also irresistible especially when you think at the essential, clear lines that Albrecht Durer used in his watercolors.

So I keep drawing them; trying to capture the elegant complexity of their shapes and tones keeps me happily for hours into the right side of my brain.

(Click on image to enlarge)
Oil on cardboard, 40x30 cm.

In this case I wanted to enhance the contrast between the dark, colorless background and the energy that the leaves of cyclamins project into space. The background itself was also the part that took me more to define, I could not find a good solution for it.
I added the little toy to have some accent of pure color and suggest that the calmness of this place would be soon over, the time of a child nap.

It's the art: Anna-chan and Hamtaro

Disclaimer: I am not especially fond of mangas and franlky find the current ubiquity of manga aesthetics slightly pesky.

Nevertheless, Anna does look like a manga character from time to time. And I wanted to combine this with the cartoon she liked mostly, to make a time capsule so that many years from now she will be able remember these days.

Click on image to enlarge
Oil on cardboard
50x40cm

Early keyboards: Saint Cecilia

This is Saint Cecilia, patron saint of music, as she was represented by Nicolas Poussin in 1628.
A few weeks ago I had a chance to visit the Prado museum in Madrid and there she was, playing the harpsichord among the cherubs. I could not resist the urge and took a picture with my phone (apologies for the low quality).

I believe that Poussin modelled his drawing after a real musician (look at the way she flexes her fingers and the position of the wrists) but I cannot say what kind of keyboard instrument is portrayed here. The shape of the frame seems reversed with the bentside on the left, and the compass covers about 3 octaves, maybe from C to c'''. Note the lack of external case. I read somewhere that this harpsichord is a double manual, anyway only one is represented. Interestingly enough when Raphael represented Saint Cecilia about one century earlier, he placed in her hands a small portative organ, with an odd reversed shape again: the longer pipes are to the right, and there is no evidence of bellows.

It's the art: Alberto on a slide

This portrait of Alberto was made while I was reading Johannes Itten's "The art of color".
I found this unique book highly inspirational, especially when Itten analyses the work of the great masters.
I recommend it to anybody interested in painting or art history.

Anyway, this is my attempt in creating a four color harmony based on 2 couples of complementary colors: blue and yellow-orange, with red and yellow-green.

Click on image to enlarge
Oil on cardboard
30x40cm

It's the art: virtual spraycan

I always found graffiti a fascinating form of art, which is unfortunately still largely perceived as form of vandalism. I fiddled with the idea of doing myself some graffiti, while the parallel chance of being arrested looked a bit too undignified and also a bad example for my family.

(Click to enlarge the image)
Oil on cardboard, 24x30 cm

I resorted then to this oil painting compromise, making a virtual spraycan tag on the front door of my house.