Anatomy of a painting; “Renaissance”
 Click on any image to zoom
 The “101 words” writing exercise on my Open Salon blog reminded me of a similar exercise that I used as creative inspiration for the above painting. The exercise; select a historic palette and painting style, strip it down to its most basic elements, and create a bare bones simplified artistic interpretation. For my model I chose the Renaissance period, so in essence my goal was to create a Renaissance-inspired painting using an economy of color and form - just as in the writing exercise where the goal was to use an economy of words. The result of my exercise was the small painting on panel you see above. You may also have  noticed that it is also the background for my blog banner.
As a painting medium I chose casein, a paint that uses milk as a binder. I chose casein not only because it is a workable and vibrant medium, but also because I was painting a set for stage production at the time and the small upstairs room that served as a paint deck for the theater was also doubling as my temporary studio. Casein is a common scenic paint, and at the time I had access to an endless supply since it was a rather large theater. I had a full set of keys so I could come and go at all hours. I especially liked painting in the theater when there was no one else there. There’s something magical about all that empty space and quiet. It was a wonderful environment for painting.
I’ve always loved the Renaissance palette; vibrant reds and oranges mixed with an earthy range of greens, golds and browns. The blue you see in the photo of the Sistine Chapel below is actually atypical of many renaissance paintings because blue paint was prohibitively expensive. The blue paint used by Michaelangelo on this masterpiece was likely worth a king’s ransom. No, you’re not supposed to take pictures in the Sistine chapel. My finger slipped?
Oil paints used during the Renaissance period were painstakingly compounded from natural substances ground to a fine powder and mixed with a linseed oil binder. Blue was made from lapis lazuli, a semi-precious mineral. It’s a wonder that any painter in this age lived long - many pigments used were highly toxic substances such as lead (white) , mercury (vermillion red)  and arsenic sulfide (yellow). These toxic substances have been replaced today with a wide variety of synthetic pigments.
December 3rd, 2009 at 5:32 am
This momentousdecree wow gold came as a maplestory mesos great wow gold sellers beacon light aion gold of hope to buy aion gold millions of negroslaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.