Although it had nothing to do with Vincent's death, apparently, smoking kills.

Well, where the heck did January go?

Happy groundhog day to all - Brio did not see his shadow, so I guess that means 6 more weeks for him of laying on the sofa and sleeping all day.  That being said, I can assure you that if he had seen his shadow,  the result would have been the same.   The only real prediction that can be made about Brio is that he is darn good at laying around and sleeping all day.

Speaking of laying around and sleeping all day, while Duncan was home for his College Winter Break, I decided I would paint something for him, hoping that that he could use it to decorate his dorm room.

I knew that neither Duncan nor his room mates would really appreciate the aesthetic quality of a landscape painting or a sweet picture of a vase of flowers, so I decided to take a look at some of Vincent's more bizarre works.  All of the following can be found at the online Vincent van Gogh Gallery, which is a fantastic resource for all things van Gogh.

Some of the weirder subjects in the van Gogh catlogue include:

a crab 

















 two rats -



a bat (or, as it has also been described, a flying fox...) -



bloaters (some kind of fish?) on a piece of yellow paper -




the famous bandaged ear self portrait:

a portrait of a one eyed man -




                                                                          and, of course, the skulls:

in profile



                                                                             head on (no pun intended)
                                                               






















And the most famous skull (and partial skeleton) of all, the one with the smoking cigarette:



According to the Van Gogh Museum, Vincent probably painted this portrait during the time he was a student at the art academy in Antwerp, in the winter of 1885-1886.

I think that it surely says something about how Vincent viewed the strict academic environment of the academy, or perhaps he or another student set up the scene as a joke.  Either way, the image lives on.  Which is pretty good for a skeleton.

You may be thinking that you have seen the smoking skeleton before.  It was used as the cover art on one of humorist, author, and wickedly entertaining speaker David Sedaris' books,

Notice the title!

and a quick web search reveals that, in addition to being tattooed on every imaginable part of the human body,

the smoking skeleton has been reproduced or reinterpreted on everything from coffee mugs, to neck ties to even a banana!



My favorite, though were the needlepoint interpretations; this clash of media and subject is absolutely awesome!

So the skeleton would be my next project.  I used a small, portrait sized wrapped canvas, and began by laying out Vincent's original with the triangular frame method of transfer:

I drew my sketch in with pencil.  The skeleton was very challenging to draw, primarily because it was very intricate in the way that the  bones fit together.  I think  that I was also at a slight disadvantage because I was not drawing from an actual skeleton, but rather Vincent's interpretation of an actual skeleton.  It was also very difficult to keep straight exactly where the darks and lights, foreground and background were going to be on the finished canvas.    

Next, it was time to mix up some colors.  I observed the the background, and even the skeleton in Vincent's original had a very greenish cast, so I started with Payne's grey, Phthalo green (blue); then later added in Phthalo green (yellow) and the ever popular sap green.

I filled in the background and eye sockets first, adding in ivory black to the greenish bluish black I had already mixed.  I did not do one color all over, but instead laid down dark, closely matched swirls of blended colors.

For the skull (above), I added in titanium white and a little unbleached titanium to the original dark color I was using for the background.  The teeth without lips seemed to be much simpler to execute.

OK, I will make an admission here.  I just got so caught up with the painting, and I was trying so hard to work in a very turbulent, rapid fire way, that I (again!) forgot to take all of the in between photos of the work.  Yes, I could blame Zombies, and you might even believe me, but the truth is that I was very focused on the painting, and (sadly, sorry!) not on the blog that would follow.

When I finally noticed my unused camera lying on the desk, this is what I had:

I did take additional shots as I made minor adjustments to the shading, contours and placements, but really it is difficult to see the differences between the shots.  I will throw each of them up below, and let you determine if you can see what I did.  The last piece is the final painting I sent to Duncan.

His roommates reportedly pronounced it "bitchin' awesome..."

I will take that as a positive critique.