Piet 2 December 2018

It is Sunday 2 December 2018, and I am on my favorite train to Amsterdam for a live painting session at de Stoker in Amsterdam. Today it is totally overcast, and a bit rainy but it is not cold. The weather is mild. And here crashed Word for Android. Oh well. It came back up in a reading mode without the main menu. Argh… Irritation. Restarted Word and briefly the main menu came up, and then the writing mode button could be clicked, and now it is really staying in writing mode I even have the main menu. Amazing!

On Friday I went to Amsterdam for work, and I brought my camera, took some pictures and here I am on the train again. Today I will paint a male model. It is Piet. I painted him before. He is a nice guy it is just that I prefer female models.

I found it. I cannot believe my eyes. It is true. I found the secret keyboard command sequence that will unhide the main menu: Shift F6, F6, F6. I have been looking for this solution for such a long time.

I was so occupied with my new command sequence to unhide the main menu that I almost missed we were rolling on into the station in Amsterdam. Hastily I had to pull my things together and leave the train. It is incredible I found it!

On the less positive side I have to admit I had forgotten to clean my brushes last week. That is really bad.

The model was Piet. He had to wear a helmet with two horns and a spear with three points. Neptune’s!

I got the spot on the right side of the room as I wished. Behind Piet, there was a red background. Further away the wall was dark blueish. I thought it was interesting to make the picture background go from blue to red. In a way that are the two primary colors of politics these days. Then the portrait of Neptune in the front. What could that mean? What is Neptune famous for? He was the god of freshwater and the sea in the Roman religion.

In this era of climate changes and ice thaw, rising sea levels, etc., perhaps making a picture of Neptune in front of a background shifting color from blue to red is a very unique idea. In the US blue and red are opposite politically compared to blue and red in Europe. In Europe red is left. In the US lefts are blue.

So if you look at the painting and you see it has the color blue at the left and red to the right you might think it is a US-oriented image. That would be an afterthought.

The artists today were Ron, Floor, Lydia, Saskia, Tom, Irene and me.

Ron said he had been reading on my blog and found that there was too much text. It is a question of taste I suppose. Not all of the blog posts are equally important, that is true. The writing is perhaps not of the best quality at all times, but it is by me for me. Just like my art. Writing this text helps me develop, and I need that.

There were some nice comments about my painting, and that was fine. The fist was too big. I agreed on that. Tom had a good explanation about how the head should continue in the hat and that I perhaps had cut too much of the back of his head due to the helmet. I made the head bigger.

I tried to find my previous painting of Piet in my blog, but I could not see it. I know I have a picture of Piet, but I could not find it in the blog. The model said it should have been 2015, but I don’t have so many blog posts from 2015 about art so perhaps it was never blogged about.

This time I blog about the painting, definitely.

Soon at the station in Almere. Time to pack and get out.

Tomorrow we will set the dot at the community hall for the house. I am curious how it goes.

When I came home I cleaned the brushes.