Some_sewing_nerd

Please enjoy this Just Practicing water colour that came from a conversation with a stranger on blsky. They were on a Floor Vent Grate saga and somehow we got to imagining an entire ocean in there.

I just want to remind everyone that Plains Rats are an Actual Thing that exists in real world Australia, and they look like this:

Look at them. How can anyone not love that?

oh man i never told you. recently we went to the albertina art gallery and in the contemporary wing we saw this painting, “nacht der skorpione”

and we were fucking blown away by it, like audible gasping from everyone, it’s almost as tall as the room and incredibly expressive and impressive

and after having walked around looking at the work of 99% male artists and their endless studies dedicated to The Female Form for so goddamn long my very first thought upon seeing it was “this was painted by a woman”, so i walk closer and sure enough, i was right, her name is xenia hausner.

and then i look at it for a moment longer and my chest swells because these are intense characters with internal lives and that is what makes them attractive and my second thought is “this was not painted by a straight woman”

and i mean i can’t say anything for sure but i looked her up and

and nobody else picked up on this in the original painting? when i told them they were like “what, why, because of the masculine (???) brush strokes”? they were not shaken to their very core by the authenticity of it? what i’m trying to say is gaydar is extremely real and straight people extremely do not have it.

That explains a lot...

Cups   -   Cornelius Völker, 2016.

German,b.1965 -

Oil on canvas ,  190 x 140 cm.

I want to tell a story to the artists and would-be artists out there.

When I was 19, I made a large oil painting of the nerd I would eventually marry. I poured all my attention and care into this painting. It's the only art I have from back then that still holds up as a work I'm proud of today.

I entered it into a judged show at the local art center. It got an honorable mention. I went to see the show with my beloved model. One of the judges came up to talk to me, and highlighted that all the judges really liked the painting. It would have placed, except, you see, the feet were incorrect. They were too wide and short, and if I just studied a bit more anatomy-

I called over my future wife, and asked her to take off her shoe. Being already very used to humoring me, she did. The judge looked at her very short, very wide little foot. Exactly as I'd lovingly rendered it. I would never edit her appearance in any way.

The judge looked me in the eye, and to his credit, he really looked like he meant it when he said "Oh I'm so sorry."

Anyways the moral of the story is that all of those anatomy books that teach you proportions are either showing you averages, or a very specific idea of an idealized body. Actual bodies are much more varied than that.

So don't forget to draw from observation, and remember that humans aren't mass produced mannequins. Delight in our variation. Because it's supposed to be there.

The Silver Swan, built by John Joseph Merlin and James Cox, 1773.

Source: Mechanical Marvels, Clockwork Dreams (BBC)