Skater's Greetings

I downloaded The Skater by Gilbert Stuart courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington. As I mentioned in my last post, I love it that so many museums now have Open Access collections!

The Skater amused me and led to a bit of reading about the history of ice skating. Check out The Ice-Skating Dandies of 18th-Century Paris by Lauren Young on the Atlas Obscura website or The History Of Ice Skates by Johanna Mayer on the Science Friday website.

It also inspired me to make something with the image. I experimented with cropping the painting to make bookmarks (and I may yet finish that project later), but ultimately I felt compelled to design greeting card around it.

If you want to send a message with all the panache of an 18th century ice skater, you can purchase a printable PDF on my Etsy store, HannahRoseTruett.etsy.com

Exploring Open Access Collections: The Skater by Gilbert Stuart

A few years ago I learned about the Rijksmuseum inviting creative people to download images from their collection to do creative things.

Now I find many museums with Open Access collections and I rejoice.

Today I will share a portrait that fascinates me: The Skater (portrait of Sir William Grant) by Gilbert Stuart. The portrait is from 1782 and is done in oil on canvas. The image is available for download courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Washington here:

https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.39729.html

Just look at that stern, focused face, those standoffish crossed arms and the incongruous grace and whimsy of the shapely legs on skates. I'm comforted to learn that the action pose was as unexpected to audiences of the time as it was for me. Good job Gilbert Stuart!

Next time I'll show you what I made from the picture after I downloaded it.

Still-life #2: Clementine in Pieces (Gouache)

Moving into 2-color gouache paintings, I used a bad-tasting clementine for my subject.

Clementine in Pieces, 5.5 by 8.5 inches (14 by 21.6 cm), gouache on paper

I found the translucent segments to be an interesting challenge to paint. I didn't do as well as I hoped, but I'm glad I tried.

Still-life #1: Origami Paper Crane in Gouache

I started to freeze-up when I decided to paint my first gouache still-life. What would I paint? I was reading Daily Painting by Carol Marine and got overwhelmed with all the ideas. I think I picked the color for the painting before the subject. I decided to limit my palette to greens. While I didn't specifically intend to paint a green object, my little green origami crane jumped out at me as a great subject with its clearly defined facets.

Origami Paper Crane, 5.5 by 8.5 inches (14 by 21.6 cm), gouache on paper

I scanned the finished painting on an old HP printer. Without any post-processing, the contrast in the scan looked better than how the painting looks under the light at my desk!

Dipping My Toes in Gouache...But Not Literally

I've started using gouache! My first experiments have been using Artist's Loft gouache on Canson mixed media paper. I tried to follow along with the first 2 gouache tutorial videos by Myriam Tillson.

(Link to Myriam Tillson's complete art tutorials playlist on YouTube) I didn't quite match the tutorial, but it gave me a feel for the paint.

 

I also learned that the tape I was using to hold down the paper was doing more harm than good. I can work with the paper on a plastic clipboard without it buckling too badly. If I decide to use tape again I will need a new type of tape and/or a new way to remove it since it insisted on either tearing the paper or leaving most of itself behind!

 

Distorted Portrait Studies

I started taking weird snapshots a couple of years ago. I would take the pictures from above, letting foreshortening distort faces. Now I've started sketching from those photos.

For this first one, I selected out 3 colored pencils from my bag at random. Peach, orange and violet were an easy set to color with. I sketched in some of the fine, dark shadows with a Pigma Micron pen and I blocked in the background with a purple Tombow marker to make it pop.

Distorted portrait study, 5.5 by 8.5 inches (14 by 21.6 cm), mixed-media on paper

Later that evening, I turned the page and drew another in graphite while watching shows with my family. The marker shows through in places, making for an interesting contamination.

Distorted portrait study, 5.5 by 8.5 inches (14 by 21.6 cm), graphite on paper

The sketchbook I used was too tightly bound for me to get a good scan of the drawings, so I took photos and played with a perspective distortion to square-up the pages. This distorted the drawings even more than the odd photos did. Overall I was encouraged by these studies and I'm planning to explore these ideas further.

Catching-up With Salvaged Papercrafts

I could call this "catching up after not posting for months" or I could look on the bright side and say I have enough of a backlog of subjects to post about to last for quite some time to come.

In January and February of this year (2021) I participated in the ART.HAPPENS virtual art show 

My entry was a collection of projects using papers that were on their way to the recycle bin. I call it Salvaged Papercrafts