St. Clare

We started something new this week, my “husband” bought the dvd’s for the Insanity workout for the both of us. I’ll have you know there is a reason they call it the “Insanity” workout; it’s because you have to be insane to do this workout if:

1. you are over 25 and
2. you are not in shape to begin with.

I’ll bet you can guess that I have hardly been able to move. Notice who I blamed (said “husband”) because I can hardly move my arms to paint….no, it’s not my fault I’m so out of shape. :)

Well after a week I have finally moved out of the “so sore I can hardly move” stage and was able to complete the painting of St Clare. And you’ll notice that I took some liberties with the color. The original painting by Simone Martini (1284-1344) is below my rendition.

The lesson for this weeks Diary of faces class was hands, but I feel that the position of the mouth and nose and the head cloth was more difficult than the hands in this painting. 

Overall I’m happy with how it turned out.

Here is the original:

If you’d like to know more about St. Clare, visit this Link: St Clare 

I’m linking to Paint Party Friday, please the other participants. There always lots of wonderful art to see.

Faces of Angels and Saints

What I have for this week’s Paint Party Friday entry are a couple of works in progress.

The first is an angel using one of my 29 faces sketches from May that I painted as a male last week but a female this week. (What a difference thin eyebrows make.)  It’s still a work in progress as I need to do something to the background and the wings.

This next work in progress is for the Diary of faces class. I chose to work on a rendition of a portion of Simone Martini (1284-1344)- painting of Saint-Clare.  I’ll show the full painting when I complete the painting.   This week the focus was supposed to be hands but I’m having more problems with the shadows on the head cloth than the hands. Hopefully it will look better when it’s painted.

Any constructive criticism on the sketch is welcome. I’ve been looking at it so long I can’t tell if it’s all pointed in the right direction. :)

Thanks for stopping by. Please be sure to visit the other Paint Party Friday participants. 

Diary of Faces wk 2

Here is my rendition of Nicolae Grigorescu’s painting named Gypsy's Head. Nicolae Grigorescu was a Romanian Painter, 1838-1907 and was one of the founders of modern Romanian painting.  You can see more of his art by clicking here.

Here is my initial sketch

This is my painting, and it seems that somewhere in the middle of the painting she decided to look elsewhere than straight ahead. I mean, in my initial sketch and the original painting the eyes are looking straight ahead and now they are looking to the left.   But over all I’m pleased with the results. At least she isn’t googly eyed right?

and below is the original work by the artist:

I’m linking to Paint Party Friday. Please go visit this blog and all the wonderful art by the participants.

 

One last note: And I have to say welcome back to my precious Little G who spent a confusing week away from his mama, papa and nana. My cautionary note for the week: If you’re thinking of taking a child away from his only source of security, please think of the child and not your own petty reasons for taking him. It took him quite a while to feel secure again that we weren’t going to leave him.  I’m sure no one reading this blog would do that to a child but I had to say it.  That’s all.

Diary of Faces week 1 painting

I’m back to faces, and I’ve been taking the Diary of Faces online class with Sharon Tomlinson of http://allnorahsart.blogspot.com/  In this class we are recreating faces painted by foreign artists. I found a self-portrait by Zinaida Serebriakova done in 1930 that I really liked and cropped it leaving just the head and shoulders. The full painting can be seen by clicking the artist’s name.

 

This is my rendition. It doesn’t look the same and no one is going to mistake it for the original but I am very happy with the result.