Friday Museum Sketches

by on April 26, 2013 at 8:26 am
Posted In: Art

DogsandShepherdsfightingToday’s sketch is another from the Seattle Art Museum’s Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough exhibit, Thomas Gainsborough‘s Two Shepherd Boys With Dogs Fighting from 1783.

Since the place was pretty crowded on a Sunday afternoon, I took the exhibit tour afterwards. It was described as a picture of human cruelty with the boy raising the stick to hit the dogs is actually the one trying to save the loosing dog and the smiling boy who is restraining him actually wants the fight to continue. The docent also said that apparently Gainsborough planned to do a follow up painting of the two boys wrestling in the dirt as the two dogs watched.

I’m  fascinated how the artist was able to get the pose of the dogs in action like that without a camera. Tons of thumbnail sketches? Taxidermy models? A really good memory? I know I’m impressed.

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Caught up on Game of Thrones

by on April 22, 2013 at 2:20 pm
Posted In: Test

I’d gotten behind on the current season of Game of Thrones last week as the friends who provide me with my HBO fix were out of town doing the wine tour in Columbia valley. But thankfully I was able to get back up to speed yesterday. As I’ve said before since I am currently up to speed on A Song of Fire and Ice up to A Dance With Dragons I already know what is going to happen in this season to the point that I could probably skip numerous episodes without any harm but as I’ve mentioned in past posts, it’s not what happens in an episode it’s how it happens. So I find myself more interested on what the writers and director chose to emphasize and how they organize plot points. Giving certain things more importance then they have in the books.

Without providing too many spoilers, the two best examples are first: Theon‘s subplot. In the books he disappears until A Dance of Dragons, crippled, maimed and brainwashed by Ramsay Bolton. In the show we are being shown how this goes about presumably I suppose to keep the character in the viewers’ mind rather than having him disappear for as much as three seasons.

Second they have fleshed out the role on Lady Olenna, the Queen of Thorns, quite a bit. This one though is self explanatory. Only an idiot would waste Diana Rigg in a cameo when they could have her for the whole season.

All and all I am increasingly drawn in to season three. If i have any complaint it’s that there are so many plot points going on it is hard to focus on any one of them. But I’m comfortably certain this shall be corrected when I watch them all together when the they come out on DVD.

And besides, I can’t complain too much when it has things like this in it:

followed up by a rock and roll version in the credits.

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Friday Museum Sketch

by on April 19, 2013 at 8:20 am
Posted In: Art

PrudenceToday’s sketch debuts my new Canon Pixma MG5420 multipurpose scanner and printer with the “The Exchange of Produce” (yes… really… while it is supposed to be allegorical I’m pretty certain the name looses something in the translation) by Francois Boucher in 1768 from the Seattle Art Museum’s Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough exhibit. It’s a nice example of the pastoral subject matter that was all the rage in the Rococo style.

As I mentioned last week the last time I was there and did this picture, the place was packed and I really couldn’t  get into my zone so the sketch has some major mistakes with the placement and size of the figures… Though in hindsight and looking at the original again I must say it’s not quite as bad as I remembered.

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