Lines and Colors art blog
  • David Bottini (update)

    David Bottini
    David Bottini

    David Bottini is a contemporary painter whose paintings are often filled with dappled light — sparkling on the surface of streams, highlighting paths and glinting off of bright autumn leaves.

    His paintings are rendered in acrylic, but in a painstaking method involving layers and layers of glazes; a method inspired by his love of the luminous translucent effects of old master oil painting.

    These characteristics, unfortunately, don’t come across well in photographs, so we must content ourselves with the superficial appearance of his work, which is still fascinating.

    There is a video interview with Bottini on YouTube, in which he discusses some of his technique.

    See also my previous post on David Bottini from 2015.



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  • Eye Candy for Today: Jan Bogaerts still life with cherries and stoneware can

    Still life with cherries and stoneware can, Jan Bogaerts
    Still life with cherries and stoneware can, Jan Bogaerts

    Still life with cherries and stoneware can, Jan Bogaerts; oil on canvas; roughly 14 x 18 inches (35 x 46 cm).

    Link is to sold listing on Simonis & Buunk gallery, which has a zoomable version of the image. Large image here.

    Early 20th century Dutch painter Jan Bogaerts elevates his simple, commonplace still life subjects with a remarkable sensation of the tactile feeling of their surfaces.

    You can just feel the bent edge of the plate under the cherries, the slippery surface of the fruit, the cold snd slightly uneven character of the chipped tiles, and the heft and smooth surface of the cracked stoneware vessel.

    For more, see my previous posts on Jan Bogaerts.



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  • Eye Candy for Today: Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller landscape

    View of Ischl, Ferdinand Georg Waldmuller, landscape painting
    View of Ischl, Ferdinand Georg Waldmuller, landscape painting (details)

    View of Ischl, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, roughly 18 x 22 inches (45 x 57 cm), oil on wod panel; in the collection of the Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

    This landscape by the early 19th century Austrian painter is a view of a mountain village in 1838.

    The museum’s site has both a zoomable and downloadable version of the image. There is also a zoomable version on the Google Art Project. I found these images to be somewhat dingy looking, as though the painting’s varnish had yellowed.

    There is an image version on Wikimedia Commons, that looks appealingly brighter, and unlike many “adjusted” art images on the web, appears to have been worked on by someone with professional level graphic arts skills.

    However, it may still be a bit too far from the real thing given the appearance of the museum’s version.

    Taking into account my experience with art images of paintings I’ve seen in person that are often reproduced too darkly on the museum websites, I’ve taken the liberty of making my own adjustment, somewhere between the two.


    View of Ischl, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

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  • Pierre Adolphe Valette (revisited)

    Pierre Adolphe Valette, atmospheric paintings
    Pierre Adolphe Valette, atmospheric paintings

    Pierre Adolphe Valette (sometimes referenced simply as Adolphe Valette) was a painter originally from France, who spent much of his career living and working in England.

    He is noted in particular for his atmospheric cityscapes, full of mist and mystery. He was influenced by the French Impressionists’ fascination with the effects of atmosphere on light, and at times shared their colorful palette, but often approached his subjects wiith a soft, muted palette that de-emphasized intense color.

    You can also find some examples of his drawings and etchings.

    For more, see my 2011 post on Pierre Adolphe Valette.



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  • Eye Candy for Today: Whistler’s Black Lion Wharf

    Black Lion Wharf, James McNeill Whistler, etching
    Black Lion Wharf, James McNeill Whistler, etching

    Black Lion Warf, James McNeill Whistler, etching, roughly 6 x 9 inches (15 x 22 cm); link is to the impression in the collection the National Gallery of Art, DC. Their site has both a zoomable and high resolution downloadable version of the image, as does Wikimedia Commons.

    I’ve had the pleasure of seeing in person another impression of this etching from the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I’ve taken the liberty of adjusting this image a little lighter to be in keeping with the impression I saw.

    In my personal pantheon of great masters of etching, Whistler comes in at number two, after Rembrandt and just before Anders Zorn.

    Whistler’s etchings of the wharves and warehouses along London’s River Thames just knock me out — so detailed in places, elegantly simplified in others, precise and yet loose and gestural.

    The delicacy of line is a characteristic of etching that no other medium can duplicate, and Whistler was a master at it. When looking at the details from the image (like the figures on the balcony in the images above, bottom), keep in mind the size of the original.



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  • Coles Phillips (revisited)

    Coles Phillips Fadeaway Girl illustrations
    Coles Phillips Fadeaway Girl illustrations

    Clarence Coles Phillips was an American illustrator working during the “Golden Age” of illustration, just before and after the turn of the 20th century.

    Though his approach was not limited to the concept, he was known in particular for his series of illustrations called “Fade-away Girl”, in which he played with negative space and found multiple ways of defining a figure without actually delineating an edge.

    For more, see my 2007 post on Coles Phillips.



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Vasari Handcraftes artist's oil colors

Charley’s Picks
Bookshop.org

(Bookshop.org affilliate links; sales benefit independent bookshop owners; I get a small percentage to help support my work on Lines and Colors)

John Singer Sargent: Watercolors
John Singer Sargent: Watercolors

Sorolla the masterworks
Sorolla: the masterworks

The Art Spirit
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Rendering in Pen and Ink
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Urban Sketching: Understanding Perspective
Urban Sketching: Understanding Perspective

World of Urban Sketching
World of Urban Sketching

Daily Painting
Daily Painting

Drawing on the right side of the brain
Drawing on the right side of the brain

Understanding Comics
Understanding Comics

Charley’s Picks
Amazon

(Amazon.com affiliate links; sales go to a larger yacht for Jeff Bezos; but I get a small percentage to help support my work on Lines and Colors)

John Singer Sargent: Watercolors
John Singer Sargent: Watercolors

Sorolla the masterworks
Sorolla: the masterworks

The Art Spirit
The Art Spirit

Rendering in Pen and Ink
Rendering in Pen and Ink

Urban Sketching: Understanding Perspective
Urban Sketching: Understanding Perspective

World of Urban Sketching
World of Urban Sketching

Daily Painting
Daily Painting

Drawing on the right side of the brain
Drawing on the right side of the brain

Understanding Comics
Understanding Comics