To Ellen


This blog is made to the honor of my grandmother Ellen Elisabeth Thomsen who was a modern woman .
She was born in Randers in Denmark 1895 and died in Copenhagen 1976.
She had long salmon red hair down to her hips. It was braided and put up with lots of hairpins to make it look short.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Redheads in dark surroundings


When the  background is painted dark brown or black the red hair looses it's glow.
By dressing in different colors I can 
make my own hair look more or less red. 
The color that gives the strongest red glow is purple.
There are hardly any pictures of redheads with purple background or purple clothes.



Bernadino Licinio
1489-1565
Mary Magdalena



This picture is strange it seems to be a photo collage.
The rough canvas in the background doesn't fit the fine grained canvas under the figure.






Francesco Furini









Nella Marchesini
Selfportrait







John Everett Millais
Sophie Grey

Irritating mistake that he wasn't precise enough with her eyes.









Michael Sittov
Catharina of Aragon










Unknown artist
1600th century German artist









t

Anne Boleyn
Artist unknown











Dutch unknown artist











Franz von Lenbach












Joos van Cleve
Eleanor von Hapsburg












Artist Unknown











Alexander John












Franz von Lenbach
Portrait of Lilly Merk








Isaac Snowman








Mary Queen of Scotts










See You soon

Thursday, February 14, 2013

Redheads in golden tones



Again like in earlier post where I showed how pink or red clothes or background eliminates the dominance of  red hair... also 
golden warm tones around the model takes away the glow-effect of the red hair .




Mary Cassatt

This picture is so freshly and so quickly painted, that she didn't get the perspective right in the 
bench, but it doesn't really matter, The important thing is that the face and hands are clearly defined.
When You sketch an oil painting this quickly,  be sure to use more oil in the color else it crimps and cracks on the places that get a thicker amount of paint.





Gabriel Dante Rossetti


Sometimes when filling out spaces around a figure one has too be more careful with 
perspective and sizes of elements ,else it gives some rather funny size problems.
Like the huge birds and tiny house?





Lajos Gulacszy









John William Godward








Angelo Morbelli

A wonderful display of two lights. 
The light from an electric source or fireplace against the day light. Who notice that she has red hair???










Lyndall Bass
Vanessa


Again a picture can be carried up by letting two parts or areas play against each other . Either from different texture or different finish or different lights or being shiny against mat , etc.
Here the rough diffuse and quickly painted background against the fine acurate attention 
to skin, eyes, mouth, nose, ear and hair is  enough to make it a picture and not a sketch.
I like when Artists think and chose what is important to show and why.
The only thing that bothers me is that one has to be very precise also with the diffuse sketched part, because even  no matter how lacking of details the area can still climb in front of or behind the figure if the 
stokes run along the contour or against it, specially when the contour is not defined on concave and convex
turns. As a rule the concave areas has a very slim and pale contour and the convex has broad and dark contour line. Watch out that you don't pull the background along the contour line  like in this picture on the shoulder part for instance or along the face contour. That is a mistake! 





 Arthur Hughes




This is how I found it, but it is actually a much bigger picture,
notice the color tone is different. People like to add effects in Adobe Photoshop and
pictures scanned from books have little resemblance in color to the real painting.







Arthur Hughes.






William Gale
Ophelia
This picture falls out side the collection of warm colors, but I just noticed 
that the two painters either used the same girl for a model or one inspired the other.
There was much competing back then , 
everyone tried to make a better expression out of the same subjects.

There is a backside to the Ophelia who in poems dies of unhappy love. 
She is  always  pictured so young and innocent. 
 but actually in real life Ophelia symbolizes all the  
poor unmarried girls who got pregnant  and chose the river,
 which  blows up the stomach of all drowned mammals and birds. 
Many young girls chose this way so no one would know about  their shame.






Rodolfo Amoedo
Juliette









Andrej Remnojov









 Julie Wolfthorn Thorn
Jewish Artist killed in Theresianstadt concentrationcamp










Amadeo Modigliani









Vojtech Preissig










Edvard Okun










Mersad Berber









Joseph Edward Southall








Vojtech Hynnais








Paul Serusier
Madame Serusier in the garden





All the women in this post had red hair but with the golden green  or bluish background
it doesn't become the most important picture element.

Saturday, February 9, 2013

New exiting paintings of Redheads




Charles Weed
American contemporary











Robert Auer








František Dvořák










Alexandru Satmary









Franz von Lenbach











Charles Webster Hawthorn









Augustus Edwin John










Charles Emile Auguste Carolus  Duran









 Frederick Hendrik  Kämmerer










Sir John Lavery
lady Disdain





Harry Roseland











Dennis Miller Bunker
Portrait of Jessica








Maria Augustin  Zviller