Still plugging away, this time on the fake Woman In Gold – Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer – by Gustav Klimt. This is a real labour of love. I want to do it well, but the original is so complex that it’s taking ages. Apparently Klimt took about 4 years to do it. He started his career as a muralist, working on a huge scale on massive decorative public art. That’s somehing we seem to have lost in Western art in recent years. In the first half of the 20th century they were really popular and great artists worked on murals – Gustav Klimt, Frank Brangwyn and Diego Rivera. Where are the muralists now? Banksy maybe?
I’m working with Liquitex Heavy Body acrylic paint onto a cheap canvas. I’m using mainly metallics – copper, antique gold and silver, with some titanium white, mars black, Turner yellow, lemon yellow, orange. I’m using various techniques that I have been learning about in the Cheese and Wine Painting Club that I take part in each week – dry brush, wet on wet, and scraffito – scraping into the wet paint to the dry paint underneath. Klimt used gold leaf in the original, but I’m not going to go to that much effort. I’m focusing on the decorative work first and I’ll finish the portrait and hair when that’s finished.
I’ve been joining in with the Cheese and Wine Painting Club on Facebook on Friday lunchtimes, where painter Ed Sumner leads us in doing a painting by a great artist. This coming Friday it’s a van Gogh Sunset. The sessions are free or a donation if you can afford to. He’s been doing these since the lockdown started back in March.
A Chance To Own One Of My Artworks
I have some small screenprints for sale, inspired by my drawings of the taxidermy collection at Swansea Museum. I have given these antique artifacts a modern twist by combining them with images of rubbish – old fruit nets, bubble wrap and plastic – highlighting the problem of human pollution and how it affects wildlife.
To buy my work on the Swansea Print Workshop site please click the image to the left and to see the complete image.
Inspired by drawings of the taxidermy collection at Swansea Museum. I have given these antique artefacts a modern twist by combining them with images of rubbish – old fruit nets, bubble wrap and plastic – highlighting the problem of human pollution and how it affects wildlife.
20 percent of the cost of each screenprint sold goes to support Swansea Print Workshop, which receives no public funding.
