A Story of The Image - Old And New Masters From Antwerp

A Story of The Image - Old And New Masters From Antwerp
Originally uploaded by thediaryaffair

Marlene Dumas at A Story of the Image, the National Museum. Looking at these unfinished watercolors, I missed being raw and primitive. You have to step right up to these women to see that Dumas used sparkle in her paint. It's absolutely subtle, and they still look like provocative ghosts.

studies

i saw some strange faces today.

and after studying them, made their children. i love strange faces. i love cleft chins. i love downturned lips and chubby sulking cheeks.

So now i have Ellie who is not afraid of spiders, and June who is perpetually melancholy about nothing and thus annoys her friends but is still much loved by those who matter.

Too lazy to scan so these are snapshots, and to punish me for being lazy the colors come out a little harsh. I love drawing on brown paper, and on wood. I've stayed away from pencils and color pencils since secondary school, but with brown paper, pencils are friends again.

Study days are lovely. They are just for me, not for clients or any audience. They are for experiments, old magazines, photographs, and interesting people. Most of all, they feed the mind. Empty minds can barely imagine anything.

portfolio

Finally I've uploaded some sort of online portfolio: http://www.flickr.com/photos/juliennetan/show/

and done

It's supposed to be yellow but it came out as blue. Sometimes I envy other people's colorful, textured illustrations, and I try to dress mine up. But I always come back down to earth and realize that where I come from, less is best.

half-dressed

something i worked on today, thinking about the lunch i didn't have

back from this place

and I'm still not done with nature. I put on flipflops and walked across to my castle by the lake, where I survey all the trees and park joggers. This is the castle where I drew this last year:
but this time i could draw nothing even though the sun was golden and there were biscuits in my bag. I thought about the Japanese children and doodled, but I think they are not meant to become drawings.

It has become a fact of life, that whatever job i find must allow me to continue with the kids' camps every year.