He woke with a start, a police siren blaring past the open window. HIs arm waved blindly in the dark searching for the electric alarm clock placed on a pile of old newspapers and magazines. The neon numbers informed his groggy eyes and pounding head that it was 04:30 a.m. His mouth felt like sandpaper and tasted like vomit. He gave a quiet groan, pushed his hands into a dark tangled mess of hair, as though trying to make his head cave in, and maneuvered off the bare mattress onto the floor.
He struggled upright, knocking over a fair few bottles in the process, leaning heavily against the wall for support. His legs were always shaky in the morning. He stumbled along the wall, hands searching for the light switch. The sudden brightness forced his stinging eyes closed. After a few minutes of tightly shut eyes and massaging his temples he squinted his eyes into the light and staggered toward his latest work.
He lurched toward it, not even bothering to avoid the mess of bottles, cans, unwashed clothes, old sketches, pallets and brushes and dirty dishes that littered the room. The canvas was bathed in moonlight making it look ghostly and sad. The light showed the shadows where the paint was so thick it rose off the giant canvas. He ran a calloused hand over the rough, crusty paint. Why did he use acrylic? He should have used water colour: the acrylic was so rough; this wasn’t what he wanted; this wasn’t right. This wasn’t her.
His fingernails dug into the paint, clawing it from the canvas, scratching and scraping until the face on the canvas was unrecognisable, until his breathing was shallow and uneven, until his heart was pounding so fiercely in his chest he feared it might explode, until his fingers were raw and bleeding and unab...
... middle of paper ...
...ged himself toward the mattress, making an attempt to avoid the glass.
He collapsed on the mattress with a grunt. Sitting upright, he pulled a sketch pad and a piece of broken charcoal out of a pile. He drew a picture of himself this time, rather than her. He hadn’t drawn himself in years; it felt alien to him now, almost unnatural. He drew himself back then, back when he was happy, back when his muse was with him. He drew until exhaustion took over.
His vision began to fade as he fell unconscious, black seeping into his eyes until sight was obscured completely. This was when he was happy, when he was able to remember. It was hazy and foggy but at least she was there even if he was forgetting her face. She could never abandon him here. It was him and his muse, nobody and nothing could get in his way. With a final glance at the man he once was, he fell asleep.
The face of the portrait is detailed, and more naturally painted than the rest of the composition. However, the left iris exceeds her eye and extends past the normal outline. The viewer can see every single brush stroke resulting in a unique approach to the capturing human emotion. The streaky texture combines with the smoothness flow of the artist’s hand creating contrast between the hair and the face. The woman’s hair is painted with thick and chunky globs of paint. The viewer can physically see the paint rising from the canvas and flowing into the movement of the waves of hair. Throughout the hair as well as the rest of the portrait Neel abandons basic painting studies and doesn’t clean her brush before applying the next color. Because of the deliberate choice to entangle the colors on the brush it creates a new muddy palate skewed throughout the canvas. Moving from the thick waves of hair, Neel abandons the thick painting style of the physical portrait and moves to a looser more abstract technique to paint the background. Despite the lack of linear perspective, Neel uses a dry brush technique for the colorful streaks in the background creating a messy illusion of a wall and a sense of space. The painting is not clean, precise, or complete; there are intentional empty spaces, allowing the canvas to pear through wide places in the portrait. Again, Neel abandons
...hese repeated vertical lines contrast firmly with a horizontal line that divides the canvas almost exactly in half. The background, upper portion of the canvas, seems unchanging and flat, whereas the foreground and middle ground of the painting have a lot of depth to them.
...would view life from a mental and spiritual perspective, did he love his profession and how he mastered his painting techniques. The wide range of tints and shades of numerous colors were blended to create the designated appearance, but how did he mix his pallet and create those colors to perfection without doing a mistake, all can be revealed by the master himself?
The first thing to notice about this painting is how incredibly involved and realistic the brushwork is. The couple’s faces are so delicately rendered. Every wrinkle is visible and every hair strand is in it’s place. The soft folds and patterns of their clothing, and the grain of the vertical boards on the house, are highly developed and reveal Wood’s incredible attention to detail. The man, especially, appears to be nearly photorealistic.
They often reduced the imagery in Kahlo’s work with an urge to “paint away” her accident, all the suffering, and the pain; this does little justice to her work, reducing it to merely a visual cry of personal anguish. It diminishes a significant aspect that is an essential element that runs throughout her life and her work, which she did with a deep intelligence and socially committed point of view.
Pioch, N. (2002, Jul 16). WebMuseum: Pollock, Jackson. Retrieved 3 30, 2014, from Pollock, Jackson: http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/pollock/
The composition of the painting takes place with the square of the canvas. The square is approximately 5' x 5'. A black frame surrounding the painting protrudes approximately 4" off the canvas. There is a 1" inlay between the canvas and frame. From this square, Reinhardt breaks the composition into six equal squares in three even rows. Texture is no where to be found in the painting. No visual indication of the artist's brush stroke is present. No varnished glare is given off by the piece. The entire work, including the frame, is completely matte. The squares take up the entire canvas in a checkerboard type arrangement. Each square is a slightly different shade of blue-black. It almost becomes impossible to see the difference between each square. The middle squares in the top and bottom rows shift more towards blue than the rest of the squares. The division of these middle squares become more obvious than the others. When the painting is looked at from a distance, it is almost impossible to see any of the squares at all. When looking from a far, all a viewer can see is a blackish blue canvas. As you stare longer into the painting, a halo begins to form around the corners of the canvas, creating a circle inside the square. Once you look away from the canvas, the circle is gone. With this observation in mind, we could say that the painting most definitely relies on the viewer. A viewer is required to look at the piece for its full affect. We could say that the squares in the painting are self-contained.
This painting, seen through modern eyes, gives off energy and increased intensity because of Delacroix's long, nervous brush strokes. He uses dark hues and neutral tones to portray a ghostly image that stirs your imagination. He seems to be almost floating in the black abyss of space. Dela...
The only problem with that was we didn't have all the dye in the world. we both kept looking at it, our hands on our hips. If there was an obvious answer, neither of us could think of it. It was at this moment, however, that Willie decided we were done wasting his time and trotted over to get our attention. His tail smacked over the black paint I had been using , which splattered up the dress from the bottom. We both gaped down at the paint, slowly oozing farther and farther up the dress. Brenn's shoulders sagged as the paint stopped after slanting its way to the chest of the dress.
...de its appearance and preserved... [t]he painter's way of seeing [and] reconstituted … the marks he [made] on the canvas or paper." (Berger 9-10) The fact that this concept is still relatable to a modern audience illustrates the magnitude of this work’s meaning.
She reached her hands up to her eyes to wipe away the sleep. She twisted to stretch her back, feeling the soreness of falling after running into Caesar. She replayed the conversation that they had yesterday. Caesar was lying, she knew how much he needed her. At Caesar's other life he was abused and he had just recently gotten out of depression. If she left and she set him into a backward spiral she wouldn’t be able to live with herself. Noticing the late time, she pulled herself out of her thoughts and lazily pushed away the rough, vintage comforter and tiptoed across the cold wooden floor over to Ben's bed. She shook him awake trying to be gentle as he awoke softy to reveal his chocolate brown eyes. Ben let out a soft groan and rolled
Wring, wring, wringing them between each other, trying to massage the blood from his skin, from the caked up red in every nail bed. Every fidget, every shuffle felt like he was exacerbating the situation. Inhale, exhale. This wasn’t a lacrosse game. This wasn’t Scott crawling home embarrassed and bloody from his fledgling lycanthropy’s accidental rabbit massacre. This was serious, and he couldn’t focus.
himself through his mediums. He used oil on canvas for his medium in this painting. There are
As I regained my consciousness, my face was throbbing with pain and my nose was bleeding. I tried to clean the blood off my face, but realized my hands and legs were tied up. I sat upright and looked around me. My house was a mess; everything was either broken, or gone. . . . I had been robbed.
THE BLAST of Sunday morning glared through the blinds, something my eyes were not prepared for. I flung the duvet aside and searched for my balance through blurry vision. The bed made a horrific creak as I got up, I had to remind myself. Get a new mattress. When my eyes decided to return to a clear state I caught my reflection in the mirror propped up on my worn desk. Straggly hair and unkempt stubble, the look of drained ability. I certainly looked the part for a working writer. However, this didn't reflect reality. My view rolled down to the blank pile of paper adjacent to my trusty typewriter, it certainly would be trusty if it wasn't such a stranger to me. I looked up to the reflection again, behind me lies a drab, dull apartment bedroom. An amalgamation of lifelessness and loss of colour, hardly an environment for a creative mind.