Several people ran outside yesterday to take pictures. The amazing lighting and sky lasted for hours. There was a blue cast to all the trees that have smooth bark and to the granite. These photos are not enhanced except where noted.
Looking north
My mother once told me that when she saw Rembrandt’s prints, she wanted to become a printmaker. She would talk rapturously about drypoint and other printmaking techniques. When I was in Amsterdam this spring, I enjoyed seeing the originals of this printmaking master who influenced my mother to dedicate her artistic career to printmaking.
This print captivated me because when you look at it closely you can see all the little lines and hash marks he used to make the dark areas and realize they were all scratched into a copper plate. My mother also spent time explaining to me the importance of knowing the light source when you are drawing and of course all the masters portray light source perfectly, but this print in particular impressed me because of the precision in showing where the light would fall and reflect and then rendering that by scratching lines into copper!
This next one is gorgeous in person and I apologize for the blurriness. I have to work harder at getting steady shots in museums without flash. This room wasn’t busy so I could have used a tripod.
When I was between jobs in San Francisco, my mom told me about a part time job at Fort Mason Printmakers. I applied and landed the job so I was able to work there for about a half year. This time gave me a chance to hang out with her and a bunch of artists, the printmakers, painters, and ceramicists, which I loved.
Here is a picture of the printmaking room at Fort Mason:
The day at the Rijksmuseum did me in. At the end of the day, I noticed pain in my hip that turned into a big case of tendinitis that laid me up for the rest of the stay. Being confined to the houseboat was nice, though, as I could look straight out at the canal from the bed while I spent a contemplative time drawing and painting on my Bamboo (a digital art pad). During this time, my mother passed away. I was grateful to feel so connected to her and felt that she was there with me enjoying Rembrandt.
Here are some posts about my mom:
Where it all Began (Mom’s in the first picture. Dad too.)
Beauty at the Beauty Salon (My mom is in the last photo, in the mirror, just a couple months before she passed away.)
Flowers for my mom: Keukenhof Gardens May 2013 series, 1 (I started my Keukenhof Gardens series for her.)
Yesterday, I planted some flowers on her grave:
You can see a bit of the gym in the background here. In Tahoe City, A Sante is a really good gym. It’s $20 for a day pass but you’ll have a huge selection of freeweights, machines and contraptions I’ve never seen before like a rope pulling system. I watched a man use that one. You stand in front of it and pull a rope hand over hand as if you are climbing it, but instead you are lifting weights. It’s a very large machine with a thick rope that runs through pulleys. These flowers are in planter boxes in front of the gym.
See the bee? (The small camera I use doesn’t do macros well (haven’t tried the macro setting though), but I managed to get one in-focus shot of the bee.)
All the cardio equipment looks out at this view!
And there’s a sauna, if you have time to enjoy it.
The Old Church in the heart of Amsterdam not only serves as a place of worship but also as a concert hall, wedding venue and exhibition and reception area.
World Press Photo Laureates from Russia and the Soviet Union:
To see the previous posts about De Oude Kerk and the photo journalism laureates:
I used to think Van Gogh had a loose style. After seeing the paintings up close, I no longer think so. Although the images are constructed of many individual strokes of color, each of those paint strokes is carefully and deliberately applied. In this painting, see how the paint strokes are directional, showing different overall directions in the jacket.
Van Gogh Self Portrait at field easel
Here are close ups:
The next one’s blurry, but bear with me, the detailed shots turned out better.
These turned out better:
I loved the Rijksmuseum. The layout is orderly, lots of light, the museum isn’t too big and the galleries are very spacious. But if you go out to get lunch at the cafe, realize that you have left the museum and have to get in line to get back in again. Nice cafe, though. But a bit crowded. The best thing about the museum is the art. Gorgeous.
Okay, here are some close ups because while I was in Amsterdam on the houseboat, I was doing a lot of digital painting on my Bamboo. And discovering how hard it is to do feet. Check out these toes. (I know the photos aren’t too sharp, sorry, but you have to work fast in a museum so as not to annoy people and you can’t use flash.)
Then I was also trying to paint a torso from a life pose I had in an ebook I bought. Found out really fast how hard life drawing is. I spent about 20 hours on it and it didn’t turn out. Apparently, according to a friend who’s an artist, I need to take a life drawing class where they will teach me about anatomy and technique. Here’s what a stomach is supposed to look like:
Check out this sculpture. You don’t see this kind of thing in every museum.
In trying to find the info that went with this room, I discovered that I put the wrong info on the room about Darius. The Assyrians were this room, not the Darius room. I fixed that post (The Louvre, everywhere you look there’s something amazing, 1); sorry for the confusion. Time stamps are really helpful for museum photo forensics.
Here is the info again, this time associated with the correct room, one that we found while trying to find our way back from the long excursion to The Code of Hammurabi.
The next one looks a little odd with the corners because I tried to rotate it and then ended up with with empty corners. Picasa has a great horizon leveling tool, but it was doing other things on my computer that I didn’t like, so I removed it. Haven’t quite figured out how to do the same thing in GIMP. But take a look at the shape of the doorway in the background. It’s shaped like an urn. I didn’t notice it when we walked through this room, only just noticed it now in processing the photos.
Nicci Carrera 