Τίμαιος, Timaios

I had forgotten that the myth of Atlantis came from Plato's Timaeus. The original a strange story of beauty and loss, of earthquakes and floods.



Raphael's Plato 
(Timaeus, circa 360BCE; 
Raphael's portrait, 1509, a detail from the The School of Athens)

                                                        

An Artful Beach

Free music for professional licensing

direct link: beach in summer by redmagik

Because of the disco beat, which never relents, the ocean seemed composed of fragmented glass. It falls on a beach painted wet on wet in watercolours and in the sky painted gulls and the metal pin of an airplane. The musical scene felt like animation, the winds coming as in an artful video. Just after half way I heard the Zephyr, soprano voices over the drone. The industrial sounds continued, with that ethereal voice calling from a long way off. The beach grasses waved like animated strokes. The water fell in shattered glass drops. The sonic beachscape built on itself, growing richer, even visionary. The drone continued, a quiet fan with beach detritus, aluminum foil caught in it. Planes flew by. Insects crawled in the dunes. Sandpipers bounced on sand wet with seafoam. Clouds became sparse. The sun shone and it was over.

                                                        

Underpainting I- Parchment Figures: Doubles, Doppelgängers, Clones

Parchment Figures: Doubles, Doppelgängers, Clones, 2010,
24" x 30", 61cm x 76.2cm, underpainting. (opens to a resizable pop-up window)

Now that I have rinsed off the chalk drawing and covered the painting in a fine layer of Liquin, which is semi-gloss, it reflects light and this makes it harder to photograph. I have boosted the colour slightly so that it doesn't appear too 'washed out.' On the easel, however, it's looking possible.

A video at YouTube on the painting process, and on the chalk
sketch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsUQVGXSWro

                                                        

Underpainting- Parchment Figures: Doubles, Doppelgängers, Clones

Parchment Figures: Doubles, Doppelgängers, Clones, 2010,
24" x 30", 61cm x 76.2cm, underpainting. (opens to a resizable pop-up window)

A video at YouTube on painting process, and on the chalk
sketch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsUQVGXSWro

When I hit the undo button on this post, everything was deleted... trying to remember what I wrote.

Ummm, oh, yes, I did some research on the NET and decided to try a new technique. In the post-midnight darkness I mixed a little Golden® acrylic paint and scrubbed the figures in Raw Sienna with a touch of Titanium White. Today I'll block in the background with the lightest wash of Golden® Raw Sienna and Bone Black. When it's dry, I'll rinse off the original chalk drawing. Then I'll paint the whole canvas with a layer of Windsor & Newton's® Liquin Original and let it dry until tomorrow.

From what I read at Windsor & Newton's® site, I believe the Liquin will change my water-soluble oil paints into traditional oil paints and rather than diluting in water and washing the brushes after in water, I'll have to use turpentine.

I haven't explored this process before and so don't know the parameters or how the colours of the oils will work over the underpainting. In the last two 'on black' paintings I found it was necessary to paint very thick layers of oil paint and I wasn't able to work on detail as I might have liked.