rest and relax
it’s time to relax… sleeping, reading, with the windy breeze and cool air.
talk about color, art and pintings, lets talk about Monalisa Smile (1503-1507). Do you know why this painting becomes very famous? It’s said to be one of the most popular paintings, beside the sunflower by Vincent van Gogh and other renaissance masterpieces by Michelangelo, Donatello and Raphael.
Contrapposto
Leonardo da Vinci is one of the first artists who applied this technique into painting. Contrapposto is an assymetric composition (of posture/figure) which builds the ‘sense of movement’ at the object and makes the object of art looks alive, real and dynamic. This technique at the beginning was applied on the work of sculptures. One of the most famous sculptures ‘David’ by Michelangelo is successfully achieve the movement effect from this technique. The artist conceptually just likes capturing the figure of the living object at certain dynamic action, just as modern tech-photography capturing the moving object.
Mystery
The lady in the painting ‘Monalisa’ until now is still a mysterious woman, and nobody can exactly describe her identity and explain who she is. Usually, at that era, artist will give any clue about the subjects they painted like ring, specific cloth, necklace and any other attributes to identify them. In ‘Monalisa smile’, none of them is found. Even the place, the landscape background at the painting is an unidentified place until now.
Excellent technique
Leonardo used a very fine brush to produce this painting which even under microscopic scale, scientist can’t find the brush stroke. His painting shows a very high quality detail (now with millions of cracks) like the softness of the lips, transparent fabric at the head of Monalisa, and many detail at the cloth and landscape.
At this painting Leonardo applied a multi layer technique for his painting, which explains why he must spend almost 4 years to finish it. With this technique the painting shows a certain quality of softness, giving the volume to the object and make it looks real.
Very impressive, isn’t it?
This year suppose to be my rest and relax year. Talk about rest and relax, it sounds related to art. And I just love to start learning art; thinking bout joining the NAFA basic western painting class. Mmm… really fun! Let’s make it a reality!
