The Junk Drawer

My Kind of... by fleur_de_lis

I was cleaning out my Photobucket closet and ran into all sorts of forgotten 'prizes' stuffed away! Here is a sampling of My Kind of Stuff ! My kind of action figure. Aaaargh me maties! My kind of bandaids. My kind of coffee mug...fill it with hot liquid, and Van Gogh's ear disappears! My kind of goggles. Definitely my kind of tattoos! My kind of chapstick...mmmm! My kind of wall clock. Forgot about this one...my kind of dental floss. And finally, stuffed way back in the corner ... My kind of shoes! Whew! That was hard work, but it had to be done. What's in your closet?

Tribute by fleur_de_lis

On January 16, 2009, at the age of 91, one of America's premier artists died--Andrew Wyeth. As a tribute to him, I would like to showcase his most well-known painting Christina's World. Christina's World is a painting of a woman Andrew knew. He was visiting the Olson house (located in Cushing, Maine) and happened to see Christina out one of the windows, crawling across a field. She suffered from a muscular deterioration that paralyzed the lower part of her body. Wyeth was well-known for his sparse, dry, and dusty architectural landscapes. I always find it hard to believe that much of his painting was on location in Maine, and not here in my midwest neck of the woods. Look at the composition--how he balances the large figure in pink with the buildings silhouetted against the horizon, and how the lines of her body and the faint tracks of the road focus your attention on the weathered house. The title of the painting and a little background information are all you really need...

3 1/2 Million Marks by fleur_de_lis

Yes, that is 3 1/2 million marks, the number of small dots and slashes Georges Seurat used to complete his master work Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte , one of my top ten favorite paintings. Degas called him "The Notary". Gauguin referred to his technique as "petit point". The poet Apollinaire called him the "microbiologist of painting". Seurat himself said "...see poetry in what I have done. No, I apply my method and that is all there is to it". Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat (1859-1891) is an example of a style of art called Pointillism. Pointillism was Seurat's answer to the small, distinct brush strokes of Impressionism taken one step further. Georges developed a precise optical formula using small dots and marks of color placed next to each other that would mix together and form different colors from a distance. Grass, for example might be made with yellow and blue marks which the eye...

My Favorite Artist...cont. by fleur_de_lis

Hold on to your hats, I have a load of beautiful paintings to show you! A few weeks back, I did a quick post on my favorite artist, Claude Monet (1840-1926). His painting Impression: Sunrise gave the Impressionist movement it's name and took painting in an entirely different direction. Monet and the Impressionists were not so much concerned with the subject they painted or the realism they captured. Their main concern was to capture the influence of light on a subject, to capture atmospheric effects. Monet did this with magnificent colors, strong, distinct brushstrokes and a loosely structured style. The Impressionists also began a trend of painting outdoors instead of in the studio as was the accepted practice of the time. The paintings that most intrigue me were the serial paintings Monet did beginning in 1890. These were paintings of the same subjects made under different light conditions, in different seasons, or at different times of day. Here are a few examples of those: Haystack...