Princess Elizabeth

This painting is called Princess Elizabeth, second daughter of Charles I, at the ages of 3, 5, and 6. The painter is anonymous, it's not dated. This painting hangs in the Roy Miles Fine Paintings Museum, in London.

There are several things I find strange about this painting. One of the first is that the author is so secretive about it. It's OK to let people know you painted it. It's not all that bad.

Honestly, I don't get the point of doing the girl three times at different ages. I realize they probably didn't have cameras when the picture was drawn. Unless Charles I and his wife wanted their daughter holding hands with herself, this is a strange way of tracking the girl's growth. I would have done one portrait at age 3, another at age 5, and another at age 6.

The thing that really creeps me out is the fact that she's wearing the same dress and the same shoes, but different sizes. I wouldn't have wanted to get clothing of the same style, but a size bigger. If it was my choice, I would have gotten at elast a different colored dress.

On the other hand, there are slight differences in the outfits of hte girl. (I don't know if i should be plural or now: it's the same girl, but drawn three times.) The variable is the light yellow-green scarf. In the image on the left, it's tied around the girl's arm. In the second image - crossed on her chest, in the third - under each shoulder and in front.

Another difference is the necklace. They appear similar from far away, but when you look at them, they're different. They are aso wearing differet hair accessories - the small jeweled things in the middle in their hair are slightly different.

In this painting, the young child, despite being only three years old (five and six also), doesn't look like little kids usually do. I don't quite know what it is about her, but you can tell she's some sort of royalty.

She is much taller each year. Maybe the queen wanted to brag about her young daughter who is "growing up so quickly" to all her friends, and had her drawn at ages 3, 6, and 8. It certainly looks like it!

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino's Vision of a Knight

This is Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino's Vision of a Knight, completed in 1504.

Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino, better known as Raphael, is considered to be one of the best artists of his time, along with Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.
This might be Raphael's "vision of a knight," but definitely not mine. Where's the shining armor? And the glorious white steed? And why is he asleep!!!???!!!???!!!???

Of course I understand that the shining armor might have been less popular then, but you could have come up with a more courageous-looking picture of a knight! At least standing up...

And what the heck is he using as a pillow? What is that red thing? Is that his saddle? If it is, where's the horse?

Also, his face is so pale I would have never guessed he had spent even an hour outside. They weren't supposed to have had sunscreen in the 16th century.

Another thing I find peculiar about this is the way the women are dressed. The guy, too, but let's call that his pajamas. The females' costumes seem to be normal until you get about halfway, no matter which side you're looking from - the top or the bottom. The cloth seems to drape in a strange way. The woman on the right also has some bead-like decoration on her dress.

On the other hand, I like the way the artist showed the mountains in the back, covered by fog. The castle seems mysterious and dramatic, too.

The Lute Player by August Macke

This painting is August Macke's The Lute Player, painted in 1910.

The one thing that I noticed right away about this that got my attention was the fact that most of the lute is covered by the vase. This surprises me, since the painting is called The Lute Player. I would expect that the lute and its player would be very visible rather than halfway covered by a vase of tulips.

One of the other things that captured my attention was the "X" in the top left part of the painting. Could that stand for somthing?

One of the things I really like about this painting are the bright, happy colors. I like a painting that makes you happy much more than a painting of some dark, depressing room full of dark, depressed people wearing dark, depressing clothing... I think you get the point.

Another thing is the facial expression of the player's face. He (or she) doesn't seem to be very immersed in the music. They seem to be a little mad about something. Not a very friendly expression, to say the least. Maybe they were forced into lute lessons as a kid.

La Carmencita by John Singer Sargent

This is John Singer Sargent's La Carmencita, painted in 1890.

Overall, I really like this painting. Actually, I only have two problems with this picture.

One of them is the fact that her face is really pale and she looks like she's tilting her head really far back compared to normal or something like that. I can't quite tell what it is that bugs me about her face, but there is something.

The other thing that I have noticed is her back arm. The way her arm and her shoulder are drawn, her shoulder seems like it's raised (once again, really far compared to normal). You can also see so little of the arm that you can't quite tell that's it's attached securely to her body. It looks like it started to grow a little sideways.

Other than that, I really like the painting.

When you look at her dress, the design on it is really beautiful. It's actually a very interesting dress. The skirt, aside from the poofiness, is more or less average. For the top part, it looks like it's a regular top with some sort of a shawl draped over it. Not necessarily the average dress you see people wear a lot now, but I like it.

Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven

As requested by readers of the blog, I will post about music, specifically, the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. Why? I wish I could tell you. It's just the first music piece that popped into my head.

And guess what? It wasn't even always called that. It used to be called *drumroll please...*

Piano Sonata No. 14. Exciting, huh?

Yeah, I didn't think so. It was completed in 1801 and didn't recieve it's popular nickname until 1832.

I really love this piece of music, but (yes, there's a but) it's so hard to play on the piano!

Set aside the fact that it's really slow and I don't like to play slowly. I just don't have a large enough hand to stretch a couple notes beyond an octave! It's not my fault...

I still want to play it, but it just doesn't sound right. And my hands hurt from stretching them at least an octave without rest for 3 minutes.

Other than that, it's a really beutiful piece of music.

I wonder if some composers have their little routine to compose a new melody. Now that I think about it, composing music is tedious work. You (most likely, I really don't know how true this is) have to hear something in your head, then figure out the notes to it on the piano or whatever instrument you're composing for, then write it all down. And then do the same thing again. And again. And again. And again. Until you're done.(I just realized I could have used copy-paste. Oh well. I am a blonde...)

And then you have to hope that someone likes it enough to play it in some concert hall so you can get some money and hope your hours and hours of work weren't for nothing.

Woman Cutting by Kazimir Malevich

OK... you know the drill: this painting is called Woman Cutting and was painted by Kazimir Malevich.

I find this painting just plain strange. First of all, the woman is... big. Usually painters paint these perfect, pretty, skinny young ladies. I guess this woman was the only one around.

She also looks like she's missing a thumb of the hand that she's holding whatever she's cutting with. And what is she cutting? And what is she cutting it with? I guess the black area next to her hand is supposed to be a knife, but it really doesn't look like she's holding it, whatever it is.

Are those curtains she's cutting? When I imagine somebody cutting, I think of food or paper, not curtains... Maybe Kazimir Malevich was "too creative" for paper...

The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger

This painting is called The Ambassadors, and was painted by Hans Holbein the Younger in 1533. (I start every post like this. I should think of something new...)

Anyways, looking at the painting, you are probably wondering: what the heck is that white blob in the middle? Looks like some skull that they stretched out and tilted. I wondered that, too, and a quick google search brought me to an article that explained everything.

If you tilt it in a certain way, it's a skull! (Since you can't tilt a computer screen very easily, here's the skull as a normal image.)

You might think: yeah, yeah, just google how to draw in a cool way and that'll be on the 10th page or something. But not for Mr. Holbein!! Keep in mind that this was paintied in 1533!!!! No, it's not a typo. That's 477 years ago.

Pretty, cool, huh?

Makes me wonder, though, how bad it actually was to be an ambassador then. With skulls on the same painting...

But then again, some of the other stuff there is pretty random. Like a lute, a globe, several books, some weird blue ball and other things I don't see every day and therefore can't identify.

The Dance Foyer at the Opera by Edgar Degas

This painting is The Dance Foyer at the Opera painted by Edgar Degas.

I've been staring at this painting for the last three or so years, every day. (It's my mousepad!) Even after looking at it for so long, I cannot find anything wrong with it. It's... perfect!

One of the things I love the most about Degas paintings is the fact that in most of the pictures, there's somebody doing an arabesque of some sort - the people are always in action. You can actually tell that it's people, not robots that he's drawing. And (wait, it gets better) the legs look like they're attached to the body.They're not raised in some humanly impossible way, and you can tell that it's attached to the person it's closest to.

One thing interests me, though. This is supposed to be some sort of ballet class or rehearsal - whatever you want to call it. I don't quite understand who the two men are. I would suspect that one of them is the musician, but there is no piano. (I doubt the musician played recorder for the ballet.) The other man is probably the director/teacher, but I would think that he would be wearing something he can demonstrate moves in... Maybe not... Maybe the ballerinas are supposed to be so good that they can read his mind and tell what he wants them to do. Maybe those are just his comfortable dance clothes.

The Dream of the Poet or The Kiss of the Muse by Paul Cézanne

This is the painting Dream of the Poet, also called The Kiss of the Muse, painted by Paul Cézanne in 1859-1860.

It is drawn in a strange, almost mysterious kind of way. Both the poet and the muse are very pale. Also, honestly, the poet looks dead. His face seems to be very flat.

One of the things I notice first is the fact that the poet and muse have about the same skin color. Usually when I picture some heavenly body such as a muse of a ghost, I think of something very pale and white, unlike this painting, which shows the muse with a more or less average skin color.

Another thing I have noticed: where's the pen? What has the poet been writing with? There's nothing in his hand, nothing on the table. No wonder he's having trouble writing: he doesn't have a writing instrument! Duh!

The clothes he is wearing also surprise me.  At the time the picture was painted, this isn't what men wore. It looks slightly like his PJs, and I don't think they wore those outside of the bed in the 19th century. Today, maybe. 19th century... no. The woman's clothes aren't necessarily the most likely outfit for a ball either, but she has an excuse. She's a muse, and there's no required clothing style for those as far as I know.

Upon closer observation of the painting, I have noticed that both character's eyes are closed. The poet, I understand. He's asleep. The muse most likely isn't. Did Paul Cézanne have a dirty secret... that he was bad at drawing people's eyes??? We'll never know. Of his other pictures which I have briefly viewed with a google search, only one has humans with their eyes clearly drawn. That's a self-portrait. Maybe he drew eyes on himself but nobody else. Maybe he thought he could mess up his own eyes but nobody else's.

Portrait of François I, King of France by Jean Clouet

This is the painting Portrait of François I, King of France, which is located in the Louvre in Paris. It was painting by Jean Clouet in about 1530.

The thing that is instantly brought to my attention is the man's proportions, or rather, his lack of proportions. His shoulders are extremely wide, each shoulder is about as wide as two of his heads. Usually, there is about half of a head in width for each shoulder. His neck is very wide, while his head is very small. Also, the eyes are very small compared to the nose.

Another thing I notice about this is the fact that the hands seem to be more or less in proportion to the head.

Possibly, the shoulders were drawn in such a way to show the king how he is regarded as somebody with high authority, somebody with a good reputation. On the other hand, if I didn't know that this painting is of the king, I would never have guessed that. When you think of a king, (you have to admit it), you usually think of some happy, nice man wearing a red cape with white fur and black spots on it and a crown decorated with multicolored jewels. This is anything but that description. The man is wearing very nice clothes (by nice I mean something that would get you noticed, rather than something I would suggest wearing). Usually, though, when a king is portrayed in a movie, he is usually wearing many things that make you understand that the man is rich. Here, you see none of that. No huge diamond rings. No crown with rubies, diamonds, and emeralds. just a simple-looking hat with some strange fuzzy-looking things on the top.

Suggestions?

Is there anything related to the arts that you would like to see on this blog? Tell me!

Journey to the Center of the Earth (the Movie)

Upon finishing the book, I watched the movie Journey to the Center of the Earth (the new one). I must admit, it's a good movie, but is very different from the book. In the movie, it's a professor and his 13-year old nephew that go to Iceland. They go there because the professor has geologic sensors in several locations, and one in Iceland has been showing lots of activity. He is continuing the work of his brother, his nephew's father. Their guide is female, and they each "call dibs on the mountain guide," until she tells them there are no dibs on the mountain guide. They enter a passage, and instead of going down voluntarily, they are trapped inside the mountain and their only choice is to go down. While they are down there, they find some tools which they believe belonged to the first person who descended there, as described in Verne's book. They later realise that the tools belonged to his brother, who had gone missing several years ago. The only part exactly accurate to the book was when they were spit out of the volcano.

Once again, a good, funny movie, but not exactly following the book in the accurate way possible.

Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

This is a wonderful book about a professor and his nephew who, after finding an old manuscript, embark on a dangerous journey into the center of the earth. They hire a guide, and he sticks with them throughout the whole journey, despite the several times the professor told him he would be better off going home. They do not end up getting to the actual center of the earth; they are spit out of a volcano, but this saves them from perishing deep down in the earth.

Jules Verne was definitely ahead of his time with his books. They are mostly science fiction, but most of it is somewhat possible. Of course, people are not spit out of a volcano every day, but the concept of descending into the Earth (not into the center, but into a system of caves), is something very doable.

He also has a sense of humor in the book. There are no jokes literally written in the book, but you must admit that a person without a sense of humor would not have the main character fly out of a volcano.

This book, just like Verne's other books, is very well written and I recommend reading it.