Demeures Peintes

vendredi 21 décembre 2012

A classical ceiling

Last summer, I have been commissioned by a young russian designer based in Paris for a classical ceiling in the XVIIth/XVIIth century style.
After having tried a couple of sketches based on GiambattistaTiepolo we finally decided to find our inspiration in french painters.
The most talented baroque ceiling painters was, to my mind, François Lemoyne.
His ceiling in the Salon d'Hercule in Versailles , quite recently restored, is an absolute masterpiece.Last time I visited the castle I took a series of pretty good pictures and found a good book on the restoration of this huge work of art.
I picked up different elements in this large assembly of figures and made my own compositions, trying to produce nice arrangements.

I have not yet seen the place where the canvases have been installed as it is somewhere in Russia but, for the preparation of this work, I had a very good rendering of the moldings of the actual ceiling.
The room is very long and includes two parts like this:

I did two canvases for each "half" , that is four canvases in all ( each canvas is approximately 4 meters wide).

Here they are with a few details...

I painted everything in oils of course . All of the pictures I used for refence were not very accurate and I hard a time with some faces and draperies . The hardest part though was certainly to give these paintings a kind of softness or more exactly "patina" that is characteristic of aged oil paintings.

With time, oil paintings seem to acquire a very particular smoothness that is part of their charm.

It is actually very interesting to know that Lemoyne himself, when he patented his ceiling complained about the fact that, in the same room, on the walls, were two large paintings by Veronese himself and that these had a softness ( a patina) that he could never compete with !!!!

mardi 13 novembre 2012

Strawberries and artichokes and leaks and pears and...

Years ago I had an order of a series of paintings representing fruits and vegetables for french kitchen designers based in Southampton(NY), Spirit of France.
Most of these paintings were squares of 41x41cm...

I remember going to the local open air market and picking up the best looking fruits and vegetables...something I rarely do, I must admit.

Some other paintings were bigger, 90x90cm...

detail

...some others in an intermediate format, 90x41cm

Here is one last painting that I had done a year before I think.

I loved painting them all.

samedi 13 octobre 2012

Tribute to JB.Monge / Drawing exrecises

One of the advantages of being self-taught is that you pick up your teachers as you wish ; you take the ones you prefer . The down-side is that you never really meet them, or rarely. You can only guess what advice they would give you and have to observe their work intensely in order to hear their voice whispering into your ear.
I think I started copying drawings on comics at the age of seven or eight . I was a fan of Asterix, drawings by Uderzo , texts by Goscinny. I still am . I have learnt a lot with Uderzo.
Many years after I keep learning the same way. If you follow this blog you have noticed that I copy a lot. I love it. I love putting my own small feet in masters huge footprints.
Sometimes, when I have time, I copy just for fun and not for work.
Here are a series of drawing I did a couple of years ago when I discovered the marvelous work of Jean-Baptiste Monge. His drawing are so beautiful and funny that I could not resist the pleasure of letting my hand be guided by his.
The last drawing of the series is not by Monge but a representation of myself, playing the guitar ( I was learning how to play Classical Gas the same week as I did these drawings).

I loved this one, you can see that he sings out of tune.

This one reminded me of Poortvliet, another "teacher" of mine.

Monge is a master at facial expressions.

This little guy is actually riding a mouse.

Simply so cute!

This one is "my" drawing in the style of Monge

For those who want to learn how to paint and who do not know what to start with, my advice ( not original I am afraid) is that if you cannot draw you will have trouble painting and will get stuck at some point. A good drawing is the key to success and progression.

For those of you who wonder how to learn without a teacher I would suggest to do what I am showing in this post , copy, when you feel you have understood the style of the artist you have picked up invent your own drawings "in the style of", then pick up another master and do it again and again ...it worked for me...

samedi 22 septembre 2012

The Mix .

I do not know how I came up with this idea . But does anyone really know how ideas suddenly appear in our minds. I remember that I was searching something "new" for a show in Bergamo , an exhibition that took place in Palazzo Moroni ( at the same time as Salon in 2009). I was working with William Cochran in the US and one evening in my hotel room this "idea" of mixing up ornaments, preferably sketchy ones, quite loosely painted with waterbased technique and "central images" painted realistically in oils came to me. I did a few quick sketches , I thought it was a cool idea.
Did I really find someting or did I help memories to come back to the surface of my consciousness? This idea is certainly not new , others have done it before me ( I have seen this afterwards) but when this happened I really thought this mix was original...here are the results. These are paintings I did a few years ago but I still love them.
I love the art of painting per se. I feel grateful towards all the artists of the past who where strong enough to deal with the Beauty of the world and so talented that they added to it... I am impressed by all the artists of our time who dare do the same . I have been given the gift of painting too and I try my best.