Good art books: David to Delacroix, The Rise of Romantic Mythology

Dorothy Johnson has written several books related to David and the Neoclassicists. David to Delacroix: The Rise of Romantic Mythology is probably her best work. I think about this little book a lot. Even though the Neoclassicists are best known for their Classically-inspired history paintings, Johnson reminds us that it was under their brush that…

A bit of drawing

For the past week or so, I’ve worked exclusively on drawings. More precisely, designs for paintings, as the one illustrated below. These design-focused drawings will be covered by paint. The one illustrated here is the smallest painting of the current crop. The others are 40″ x 54″ and bigger. This means that I can spend…

Good brush deal

I bought a brush set from Fuumuui: 8-piece kolinsky sable watercolor brushes. This is a tremendous bargain at $21.99 on Amazon. I used the brushes on one of my oil paintings and they performed passably much to my surprise. I expect they’ll fall apart quickly under the abuse of oil painting with its strong solvents.…

RIP faithful laptop

My 10-year-old Dell XPS laptop finally died. With its core i7, it was pretty hot back in 2013. I replaced its Windows OS with Linux some years ago and it was still performing acceptably. There were issues, of course. I prefer lightweight devices these days but the XPS is on the beefy side, which means…

Titanium white sucks

I take back all the nice things I said about titanium white. I was never a fan of titanium white but after trying some of Michael Hading’s versions of the color, warm white and unbleached white, I decided to give it another chance. My preferred white, flake white, is orders of magnitude more expensive than…

My red box

I keep my oils in two cabinets. Here is the red drawer. I hate running out of things while I work–it’s a mania. Painting is like taking a journey and I don’t want the journey to end prematurely. That’s one reason I have a lot of paint. I also test and review brands, brands that…

What happened to Kremer pigments?

The Germany-based art supplier Kremer was the best source for hard-to-find items not long ago. Now? It’s impossible to complete orders online, not difficult–impossible. I recently attempted to place an online order with Kremer’s U.S. location. The order contained two items that Kremer flagged with special handling requirements. One of the items is black oil…

Brush graveyard

My brush graveyard is getting too big. I throw out most of my worn-out brushes. I’ve also been known to snap in two misbehaving brushes. Those I also throw out. But my favorites I inter into the graveyard after distinguished service. I started pruning the graveyard to make room. Having a lot of brushes extends…

Status
Tom Hudson

I screwed up my website while I was improving it yesterday. The site was down for 24 hours due to a series of foul-ups. I expected the site to be down for a short time after implementing the changes, so it took some time before I realized something was wrong. Things should be back to normal now.

Death of history painting

At the end of the eighteenth century, art flowed along several currents. History painting, the primary current, was in its heyday and remained the undisputed champion until ‘history’ intruded into contemporary events with the French Revolution. This current continued into the middle of the nineteenth century with Delacroix. Another important current used myth to launch…

Reminds me of winter

Reminds me a little of winter, eh? It’s actually warmer today than it was on Christmas Eve when we lost power with the wind chill at -29 f. The fireplace kept the frigid air at bay during the 3-hour outage. Photo from the deck on Christmas. Merry Christmas from my family to yours!

Transparent earth colors

Oil paint can be profitably judged for either its covering strength or transparency. This comports with some well known bits of studio wisdom: “fat over lean,” and “thick lights, thin darks.” Covering colors, often called ‘body’ colors, hide everything beneath them. Transparent colors modify what is beneath them while leaving them visible. In watercolors, transparent…

Poem: The Poet’s Wife

Sometimes I post my poetry here on my blog. I still have the painting mentioned in this poem, which is I am showing here. The Poet’s Wife The poet’s tiny wife suffered from the cold. I gave her my fiancé’s Chinese jacket, It fit her but could not obscure her homeliness— none of the owner’s…