Painting Portrait Tips / Lots of information about how to paint a portrait
I was cleaning up my studio and I found a couple of old drawings. In the sixties my mother had to stay in bed for about two month. She suffered from sciatica. Her bed was moved from her bedroom down stairs into the living room. From there she could give orders to her eight children. I made several studies of her when she was sleeping. In the corner below my little sister. I think I was 15 years old then.
This one is in pen with blue ink.
I have already mentioned our trip to St. Petersburg. The first stop on this holiday was Helsinki. There in the Athenaeum Museum I saw some amazing paintings by Ilya Repin. In Groningen (The Netherlands) in 2002 I saw the work of Repin for the first time and I was really impressed. I admired Haulers on the Volga , but another painting , Unexpected Return. was different; he shows himself as a story teller like Norman Rockwell in his covers for the Saturday Evening Post.
Previously during the holidays in St. Petersburg we had seen the Ceremonial Meeting of the State Council also by Repin. In Helsinki a similar painting hangs in the museum restaurant. It’s painted after he changed to using his left hand. (I knew he suffered from osteoarthritis at a later age. From then he started to paint with his left hand, and his style changed dramatically.) The painting in the restaurant of the Helsinki museum was of exceptional size, and like the ‘State Council’, with a crowd of characters. However, in this painting Repin has lost all sense of drama and composition. I don’t think that it’s just because he’s changed hands. It’s a mysterious and monstrous piece of art, and hard to find in any catalogue.
Still, Repin is one of my greatest favourites!
It is the custom here on Easter Sunday to collect hallelujahs which are scraps of paper scattered from the roof of the village church. It is believed that they protect you and bring happiness.
I was able to catch eleven.
See also the video:
We walk almost every day around our village Chelva. Now is the time to find wild asparagus. This is the harvest of this afternoon. Baked in a tortilla. Delicious!
