New Portrait – Michael Sheen
‘Michael Sheen’ – acrylic on canvas 2011
I have known Michael for a little while, and recently went to see his Hamlet, directed by Ian Rickson and currently running at the New Vic. It’s phenomenal. Afterwards we had dinner and Michael spoke at length about what he and Ian had done with the play and why. A couple of weeks later we met again, I cooked an appalling piece of chicken and we asked him about his Passion, a mammoth modern unfurling of the Christ story spread across the streets and beaches of Port Talbot (an industrial port and market town where he grew up, and which has also produced Rob Brydon, Anthony Hopkins and Richard Burton). Michael is deeply energised about his work, and if the formula for success is TALENT + ENERGY (as noted by my manager, who added wisely that the formal for stardom is SUCCESS + ATTITUDE) then Michael radiates them powerfully. He’s surely one of the most extraordinary actors of our generation, and possesses a phenomenal creative drive without any of the exhausting ego that normally accompanies mere dull ambition.
So, as I tend to paint people that I know and find extraordinary, I asked if he would mind awfully. A bit over a week later, interrupted by Christmas of course, and tweeted in its various stages, the large (it’s five foot high) portrait above was completed. For those who do not tweet, or for those who do but who might like to see the sequence together, and above all for those who give a jot because they paint and are interested in the process, I shall set it out as best as I can. Here then, is how it came together:
New Paintings
I’ve been spending a bit of time in my painting studio. I thought I might update you. Twitter followers will have seen a shot of me painting the pianist James Rhodes. Here we are:
And here’s a better shot of the painting itself:
They’re acrylic on canvas. I’ve also been back and worked on the portrait of my father. Here it is, about the same size (5ft high) as the one of James:
and, for those who enjoy such things, a bit of detail:
Next up is actor friend Michael Sheen. I’ve taken a few shots and I’m about to get started. (I always take my own photographs and work quietly from them in my own time, as I only get a few hours here and there to paint). I’ll let you know when it’s done. What a great guy to paint. I can’t wait.
There are a few more pictures of portraits (including some of the older caricatures of Rufus Wainwright, Tom Waits, Clint Eastwood et al) on the artwork page of the main site. I’ll let you know here next time I have an exhibition: should be one next year somewhere.
Right, Merry Christmasses or just Happy Holidays, depending on whatnot. Ta-ta for now.
dx
Banksy unveils church abuse work
“Street artist Banksy has installed a vandalised sculpture of a priest in a gallery in Liverpool.
Cardinal Sin is a bust with its face sawn off and replaced by blank tiles, designed as a response to the child abuse scandal in the Catholic church.
In a statement, Banksy said: “I’m never sure who deserves to be put on a pedestal or crushed under one.”
The sculpture was unveiled at the Walker Art Gallery, where it is sitting alongside 17th Century religious art.
The bathroom tiles have been put in place of the priest’s face to create a pixelated effect.
“I love everything about the Walker Gallery – the Old Masters, the contemporary art, the rude girl in the cafe. And when I found out Mr Walker built it with beer money it became my favourite gallery,” said Banksy.
“The statue? I guess you could call it a Christmas present. At this time of year it’s easy to forget the true meaning of Christianity – the lies, the corruption, the abuse.”"
Read more at BBC News (Thanks Annette)
Robot Paints Its Feelings
Interactive Robotic Painting Machine (2011) from benjamin grosser on Vimeo.
“Artist and composer Ben Grosser, who is working on an MFA in New Media at the University of Illinois, has developed a robot that’s able to hear the world around it and use those sounds to create a painting.
The Interactive Robotic Painting Machine has a microphone that captures surrounding sound and a genetic algorithm designed to transform those sounds into computer code ultimately drives the robot’s paintbrush in three dimensions, controlling how much paint to put on the brush and how much pressure to apply to canvass.
The sounds can come from people in the room or, when people aren’t around, can come from the machine itself. In a related project called HeadSwap, the robotic painter collaborated with violinist Benjamin Sung, who played music composed by Zack Browning. At the same time that Sung was watching the machine paint and using what he saw to inform his music, the machine was listening to Sung play and using that to inform its art.
On his website, Ben says, “It is important to understand that what the machine paints is not a direct mapping of what it hears. Instead, the system is making its own decisions about what it does while being influenced by others.”"
Via Discovery News (Thanks Annette)
Unusual Art: Leaf Carvings
“A new art form emerging out of China. Creating these leaf carvings is no easy process, taking the delicate precision from a skilled artisan. With a knife, the leaf is slowly scraped of its outer layers, eventually revealing a near transparent surface. Special care is given to keep the veins intact to preserve the stability of the leaf.
Artists prefer using the leaves of the Chinar tree, native to India, Pakistan, and China. Resembling maple leaves, the distribution of veins in the Chinar leaves are the best suited for sculpting–and they are considered ‘lucky’ in Chinese tradition.
The process of producing a single leaf carving is said to take months of careful work. When the artwork is finished, the leaves are then preserved and framed–ensuring that they will last for decades.”
(Thanks Claire)
Friday Fun: Drawing Inspiration
If you’ve got a couple of minutes and you fancy having a little fun you could do a lot worse than clicking over to drawastickman.com and doing exactly that.
We won’t ruin the surprise for you but take our word for it that it’s delightfully imaginative and refreshingly easy on the old mind-grapes.
Thanks to Kerry for alerting us to this.
A ‘self’ portrait of an artist with memory loss
“She finished the books and wanted more. Before her mother could fetch some, Lonni Sue started making grids with words hidden in them. Thousands of puzzles poured out of her. Wearing thin the pages of a paperback dictionary, she created elaborate word lists, then puzzles from the lists and then images from the puzzles. A grid of words for things that hang in the closet took the shape of a coat hanger. Words related to trousers formed a pair of pants. Her vocabulary seemed to open a new door for her creativity.
Enter Barbara Landau. She had gone to high school with Lonni Sue in the Princeton, N.J., area. (“She was brilliant,” Landau remembers.) Today, Landau is an expert on cognitive science at Johns Hopkins University. She had followed Lonni Sue’s career as an artist for years and now, with Hopkins colleague Michael McCloskey, she explored Lonni Sue’s amnesia intensively. It was Landau who brought Lonni Sue’s art to the Walters.
Scientists often work with people who have lost the use of part of the brain to learn how the normal brain works.
After working with Lonni Sue, Landau concludes: “If we think that art and creativity have to be rooted in what we know about ourselves or what we remember about ourselves, that clearly is not the case.”
Lonni Sue has been full of surprises. She can remember how to fly an airplane — “It’s like dancing in the sky,” she said in an interview — but she can’t remember the death of her father.
She can’t recognize art she treasured before her illness — “Starry Night” by Vincent van Gogh, for example. Yet she can instantly recognize her own past work.
She can’t remember that she was married for 10 years, but she can remember how to play Bach suites on her viola. But if, as she’s putting her instrument away, her mother thanks her for playing, she’s likely to look astonished and say, “Oh, did I play?”
She cannot produce the kind of finished art she once drew, but her work shows flashes of her old skill as well as her characteristic whimsy and puns.
“When you draw a drawing, you can draw people in,” she says.”
The Washington Post (Thanks Annette)
The Man Who Stole The Mona Lisa
August 21st 2011 marks the one hundred year anniversary of the theft of the Mona Lisa, by Leondardo da Vinci, from the Louvre in Paris.
The portrait was taken by Vincenzo Peruggia, an Italian man, who took the opportunity to relieve the four iron wall-pegs of their famous charge and walk out with it under his painters smock.
The theft was not noticed until the following day and it consequently remained missing for two years before it’s new owner unwittingly came forward.
The theft made international headlines at the time but has become largely forgotten in modern society. However, a new documentary feature entitled “The Missing Piece – The Truth Behind The Man Who Stole the Mona Lisa” goes to great lengths, with the participation of Vincenzo’s now 84 year-old daughter Celestina, to uncover exactly what happened and why.
Screenings of the documentary are likely to be limited so if you manage to track it down make sure to share your views on it in the comments below.
Source: MonaLisaMissing.com
Master forgery: ’17th century work exposed as a fake’
It was believed that The Procuress, at the The Courtauld Institute of Art in London, was a 17th century anonymous copy of a 1620s brothel scene by Dutch master Dirck van Baburen.
After tests for a BBC One show, Fake of Fortune?, it is now accepted that the work is a forgery by Han van Meegeren, a Dutch forger who died in 1947.
As recently as 2009, the respected Art Newspaper revealed that curators at the Courtauld and the National Gallery (NG) believed the painting had “every appearance of being of 17th-century origin”, as the latter put it.
Now, scientific tests commissioned for the BBC programme detected a synthetic resin similar to Bakelite mixed into the paints to mimic age.
Full story at The Telegraph
CASSINI MISSION – a movie made from stills
Chris Abbas made this fantastic little movie from shots of Saturn by the Cassini probe.
Chris says: I truly enjoy outer space. It’s absolutely amazing that we now have the ability to send instruments out into the void of the universe to observe all sorts of interesting things. Asteroids! Moons! Planets! Dark matter! This is the perfect opportunity for a Carl Sagan quote:
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
The footage in this little film was captured by the hardworking men and women at NASA with the Cassini Imaging Science System. If you’re interested in learning more about Cassini and the on-going Cassini Solstice Mission, check it out at NASA’s website:
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