Madonna Lois Griffin

Again, I've got a new idea for the contest "From Comical to Classical" in the DeviantArt group The Digital Painter where I already participate with the Barbabella da Vinci showed in the previous post. 

This time is the turn of a much respectless subject, and the Madonna Colonna:

 

from Raphael Sanzio is the innocent victim of my latest work, since She and her Son have been personified by a couple of members of the Griffins family (the one of the controversial Family Guy series).

Given the subject, I had to paint something controversial as well, so I tried to depict their daily family drama in a way that Raphael and other more pious than the Griffin family would almost find blasphemous and surely irreverent.

Just take my painting with some irony rather than the original meaning of the true Raphael masterpiece, and don't forget what the cartoon is about.

Technically, this work has been done in a lack of time, since the contest deadline is very close, so I'm not really satisfied with its quality.

Barbabelle da Vinci

A couple of weeks ago I read that the DeviantArt group The Digital Painter announced a contest among digital painters. The subject is "From Comical to Classical", and, in the middle of two paintings which aren't satisfying me, I decided to take a break and participate in the contest, just for fun since I don't really hope to win something. 

The matter is, in short, to take one or more characters from a published comic, anime, or toon, and paint it in the style of a classical painting.

My son and his books inspired me to use Barbabelle from the Barbapapa family and turn her into the Lady with an Ermine from Leonardo da Vinci:

It had a lot of fun painting Barbabelle, and it went quite fast if compared with my usual standard. Even if I will be far away from getting some rewards, it was a good idea for finding something to decorate my child's room. A challenge was also to paint without color pickup, and also to get a kind of old patina to the painting itself.

Instead of the ermine I put a dog, which should resemble the Lolita dog of Barbapapa. I'm also aware that the real Barbabelle wears yellow flowers, but in this case I used red ones, since they better match the red dress, and, you know, she's a fashionist indeed...

I feel a little annoyed about the necklace not casting a shadow on Barbabelle's skin, but in the original da Vinci I cannot see that shadow as well, and I had to keep the same style as the original, so here is it:

Plus a couple of closeups:

And now I'm going to submit Barbabelle to the contest. Wish me good luck!

Flemish Flowers

One dream of my childhood, was to paint flemish flowers. Since it looked quite difficult, i never dared to do it, until I realize that Photoshop is easier than traditional oil. So, I spent almost all my free time in the last weeks to reproduce a Flower Garland from Jan Davidsz de Heem. The reference is one file found in Google, but resolution was not always sufficient, so sometimes I tried to guess some details.

This is the original of de Heem:

And here comes my repainted (no photomanipulated, if one wonders):

Painted using only the standard Photoshop chalk brush, with some jitter, to get a feeling of organic material, and sometimes a little texture.

A couple of flowers in the original seems to have been painted with pigments which have decomposed during  a couple of centuries, to judge from the almost absence of values: the red tulip and a jellow flower. The latter has been completely repainted using as reference a Rosa Foetida, which I guessed it was the flower represented in the original, adding some orange details, just for fun:

I added also a blue Morpho butterfly, just because I'd like to have a little more blue in the picture:

Then another couple of closeups:

Have a nice spring!

The Crystal Ball

It is not a mystery that I love Preraphaelites technique and subjects, so I felt ambitious enough to (try to) reproduce one of their paintings. Here I chose Waterhouse's "The Crystal Ball". There's a little of all: still life, architecture, a human subject with a not too difficult anatomy and simple fabric effects.

This is the original (from the Internet):

Then comes the 90' (well, i would say 2-hours) quick sketch:

I focused my efforts mostly on woman and still life. I couldn't manage to finish the furniture and give the correct perspective to the floor's tiles, anyway those details are less important to me right now.

Then, I wanted to give more details to the woman and the still life, so I worked it up a little more:

I love very much the potential gothic atmosphere which is hidden in this simple and apparently innocent subject: the Crystal Ball itself, book and skull have good potential to turn this painting into a much darker one.

So this is my dark interpretation of it: a sorceress doing divinations in the night. Don't think that Waterhouse would have liked it, but he will never know anyway.

Another oil copy

I did not practice so much with digital painting in the last weeks, since I had another urgent project to complete.

This summer, my mother-in-law became 70 and was asked about a nice birthday present. Her wish, a painting to their flat, turned out to be one of the works of the spanish artist Ramón Pujol, who usually paints very beautiful coastal landscapes from Mediterranean. Unfortunately, such a painting can cost around 3000 €, which is quite above our budget, and we agreed that I would have tried to paint it as a Christmas present instead. I chosed to reproduce "Harbour at last light", which is a picture of Portofino, because of the pleasant bright palette and the many elements present in the composition (sea, mountains and buildings). This would have also been a good exercise for me to practise landscape, water and reflections effects on it, and a little perspective.

(picture taken from the Internet)

Here comes the result of my attempt to reproduce this painting (since it is a photo the colours aren't the same as in my painting) :

As a disclaimer, the latter cannot be considered a false, since it is quite evident that proportions, colours and especially the quality of the work are not close to the original.

I'm not really sure if I'm really satisfied with this work. Perspective at the boats is not correct, and the copy do not show the same clean realistic touch which can be admired in the original of Pujol. Some of the houses on the left side are not really parallel with the coast line! On the other hand, it is just my second oil painting after many many years. And, my mother-in-law has not the possibility to directly compare my work with the original one, so I hope she will not notice these details...

Beginning

I used to paint and draw until I graduate. Afterwards, I got a black hole of creativity until I met my boyfriend and got our child. Since I was longing for some free time, he gave me a present card for a oil painting course, incouraging me to begin again with some kind of "art" activity.

This was the result, a reproduction of the painting "The vegetable gardener" by Arcimboldo. I chose it because we though it could be a funny subject for our kitchen.


And below you can see the original version. Surprise!