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Category Archives: Art
Tom Sawyer
Today in history, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer was copyrighted by Mark Twain.
I haven’t read this since I was a kid, but a lot of it stuck with me.
This is part of my People Who Made America Great series.
The novel has elements of humor, satire and social criticism; features that later made Mark Twain one of the most important authors of American literature. Mark Twain describes some autobiographical events in the book. The novel is set around Twain’s actual boyhood home of Hannibal, near St. Louis, and many of the places in it are real and today support a tourist industry as a result.
Steve Ditko RIP
I didn’t know Steve Ditko. I only met him through the pages of Spider-man, Dr. Strange, Hawk and Dove. In later years he developed Shade the Changing Man, and squirrel Girl for the big companies. His other characters include Mr. A, the Question, and many more.
He became a recluse and declined interviews in the 80sI think, and worked mostly on his own B&W comics.
He was found dead in his apartment on June 29th, and may have been dead for 2 days according to the police.
Here’s one from one of his Mr. A comics, and a tribute I did as a portrait of a friend.
Paul Klee’s Oil Transfer method
Paul Klee (1789-1940) was an German artist who was affiliated with the Bauhaus, Expressionistic, and Surrealist movements. Here’s some interesting pieces on his oil transfer method of turning a drawing into a painting.
First a YouTube video:
and a well illustrated blog post on the technique:
Paul Klee’s oil-transfer drawings
and one of his 9000 paintings:
On Doing Nothing: Finding Inspiration in Idleness By Roman Muradov
Not just about doing nothing, but about how doing stuff other than your art can help with it. I, also, read his graphic story Jacob Bladders, which is interesting, esp. the art.
[showbookcover isbn=”B079Q98MLF” action=”amazon”]
Do Something
Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.
–Jasper Johns
Miriam Beerman: Expressing the Chaos on Vimeo
Miriam Beerman: Expressing the Chaos from Black Eye Productions, Inc. on Vimeo.
A great documentary about a great artist, who I hadn’t known before this. You can watch the full documentary on Amazon right now (for free if you have Prime).
Her website is here where you can see some more of her work.
Jeanne & Modigliani: Paris in the Dark
A story that was quite common in the early 20th century, beautifully illustrated. A graphic novel not to be missed. You can only get it for Kindle or via Comixology right now, but the physical book is (supposedly) on its way.
[showbookcover isbn=”B07C3TCWPC” action=”amazon”]
King
Ink portrait of MLK for Martin Luther King Day. 6×4 inches Ink on watercolor paper.
6×4 inches
Ink on Watercolor Paper
Jay Defeo and The Rose
Jay Defeo worked on the massive painting, The Rose, for 8 years. When it was removed from her apartment, it basically went into storage for almost 30 years, before being restored and conserved by the Whitney museum.The artist never got to see her most famous piece hanging in a museum like she wanted. This book of essays, and photos, gives a good overview of The Rose’s and Jay Defeo’s place in art history.
[showbookcover isbn=”0520233557″ action=”amazon”]
Rarely is an artist so closely associated with a single work as is Jay DeFeo with her monumental painting The Rose. Begun in the late 1950s, when DeFeo, a central figure of the Beat generation of San Francisco, was just starting to garner widespread national recognition, the visionary work occupied the artist for eight years. Massive in scale, layered with nearly two thousand pounds of paint, the overpowering painting was already famous before its first exhibition in 1969 at the Pasadena Art Museum. Continue reading Jay Defeo and The Rose