Skull Against a Green Remnant
 

https://onlyofobjects.files.wordpres...ll-sketch4.jpg

Oil on canvas, 11" x 14"

I also saw this on facebook, I'd love to see it 'live' to see sculptural qualities. There is tension between the movement of the brushwork and the still life stillness of the subject matter. It's also a little bit scary, I like it.
Have you seen an English series 'Fake or Fortune', they investigate whether a picture is a forgery or a masterpiece. They delve into the painting techniques of major painters, it's quite interesting.

Is there a link to the picture? I can't find a way to see it.

It was there when I commented. Now it's gone.

Curiouser and curiouser...

I saw that it was gone too. I was going to replace it, but ... look! It's back!

Not here it isn't - not now. Ross - are you there? Can you see it?

I see it. I didn't see it when I used my Mac at home this morning. I do see it now on my PC. But... I didn't see it on my PC this morning.

This might be my first surrealist painting.

RM

I haven't seen it on my PC at all. Not ever.

I'm going to bed now. Perhaps it will be there in the morning.

'

"Nothing" on my screen.

Nemo

smaller below:

How about here?:

https://onlyofobjects.files.wordpres...ll-sketch4.jpg

It belongs to the phantom, ghost who walks.

That's very good.
Not sure why my mind keeps coming back to wondering where the lower jaw got to; as though it were the most significant part of the painting, notable by its absence. The skull seems to be quite miffed about it.
Maybe it's that word Remnant in the title.
Maybe the title should be just that.
Remnant.

I like the suggestion that the skull's brow is furrowed in annoyance, or puzzlement. (Perhaps like mine, because the background does not look green, as advertised in the title--I see it as blue-dominated turquoises and teals. The only green I see is part of the skull itself. But no matter.)

I enjoy the concatenation of curves--especially the skull's zygomatic arch, its top frontal outline, and the big swirl in the background fabric. I find these echoing shapes vaguely reminiscent of concentric ripples in a pond, or of Van Gogh's use of swirls in "Starry Night". The solidity of the more linear surface on which the skull rests makes a restful contrast with the motion of my eyes' meandering journey along the curves above.

The URL is coming from Wordpress, maybe they were down or having problems? Maybe it's a ghost skull?

This background looks blue to me as well. I also enjoy the relationship between the background patterns and the skull forms. There's a pleasing rhythm between these swirls and that purple eye hole. At first, I felt that the depression near the skull's temple was a bit flat and lacking detail, but now I like it because it doesn't compete with that eye as a focal point and it works so well with the main background swirl. That accent of green is perfectly lovely-creepy, as if this skull is not entirely dry yet, or has just been dug up.

I get a strong feeling of legs from the way this sits on the table with these two remaining teeth.

I am not sure how I feel about the table top not being level. It's not so far off level as to be purposely on a diagonal. It's close enough to level to give me the urge to straighten that painting. But I wonder, if it were perfectly level would it make the painting less interesting? I don't know. If it were skewed even more would that introduce one-too-many new ideas and wreck it?

Is this uneven because it's not the edge of the table but the fabric remnant is draping onto the table? If so maybe it could use a slight highlight on that drape in front of the nose? maybe a bit of blurring where the table meets fabric behind the skull? If there is draping happening here, I am not getting that at all, just flat background meets table.

Ah, I can see it now. I can see both blue and green in the background. But I can't see teeth.

I am probably holding back the potential of the picture by trying to "understand" it. I can "get" the shape of the once-upon-a-time fontanelle in the green tracery on the round top of the skull, but my eye is drawn every time to the plurge of green below the jaw. I can't make it belong to either the inside at the back or the outside at the front. I can't decide on "where" it is and this freezes my attention.

In a weird way it reminds me of Holbein's "Ambassadors" I know it's a skull I'm looking at but it's a sort of Star-Trekky "skull, Jim, but not as we know it".

Tell me what I need to know.

Ann, step back about 4 feet from your computer screen and it will all come together. There is probably a technical term for this but generally a painting is meant to be 'seen' from a few feet away. You could do the same with Sharon's pointillist painting.

Of course - thanks, Ross. A practical suggestion and one that I should have thought of for myself. Will do. (sound of Norwegian rocking-stool being scraped backwards, punctuated by knee-creaks...)

I've done that. The "green flash" still assumes a disproportionate(?) importance. From a practical point of view (!), a lot of the upper jaw seems to be missing, too, but I just assumed that that is how this object "is". I have begun to trust Rick as a painter, especially on matters of personal perspective and relative "size" in real terms. I give him "permission". (See, Sharon, this is what happens when the whiff of Yak is allowed into your artspace...)

From that Rossdistance, the swirl on the side of the head, the un-ear, suggests a concave surface, which confuses my eyes.

But this, in chronological order, is what distance did. The skull became more skull, I questioned its veracity, then let it be. The background suddenly took on texture which asked me "how can that sort of disturbance be a vertical surface?" and then immediately answered me by remaining, defiantly, as it is.

Then the green flash, dammit, and the swirly absence of ear and then - the eyesocket that, from a distance, took on a depth that sucked my breath into it. Almost a visual definition of a black hole. I peered in, exploring its hinted-at innards; it should have stared back. But it didn't; it closed an invisible fist on my looking and wouldn't give it back.

It still hasn't.

Ann, Rick is painting what he sees, the skull has lost quite a bit, but I don't see how that is relevant, it is what it is and the magic is in how it is rendered, the elan of the brushwork. For me it comes together very well, and would be even better in reality. It is often said paintings are two dimensional but they become three dimensional through texture, if you have ever seen a Van Gogh or Soutine painting in the flesh, this becomes very apparent.

But I can only comment on what I see. I didn't say it was "wrong"; in fact I think somewhere in all that waffling I said exactly the opposite, giving Rick the ownership of what he sees. He, after all, has to carry the (coffee) can. (That's a reference to another picture of Rick's whereon he explained what I thought I had understood.)

I know from experience that Rick will not take offence. He has on other occasions taken my comments in the spirit in which I made them. I carry some of his pictures in my head; the dark café on the sunny street and the one with Pinocchio that says to me "I, too, sing America".

This one eventually sucked me in through its eyesocket, but I tried to express what my head did with it on the way.

If I recall correctly, that safe café wherein I sat for a while was re-created at a later date from a pencil sketch. This skull looks as though it has been quickly sketched directly with a fat brush and thick paint. It is a different thing and, you are right, Ross, I am not at home with it.

I do not have the critical language for art (nor for poetry either, many would say) and for me to comment on brushwork in any terms other than those I understand - fat, thick, crusty etc. - would be pretentious. If I did not say what I should have said, I have let myself down by not "seeing" what I should have seen. I am out of my element and my depth.

Can you smell yak?

To me, it looks like a piggy bank.

Ann, thanks for the in-depth response. I have an aversion to the language of critique, by the way. You don't need it at all.

For example, I think the effect Ross is advising is simply called stepping back from the canvas. It is hard to do when painting, and sometime hard when looking at a painting.

Ross, thanks for the analysis.

This was, indeed, painted from my plaster skull lugged back from New Orleans 20-some years ago. The lower jaw is broken.

Thanks all!
Rick

Rick, a painter friend used to reverse a small pair of binoculars so he could see a painting from a distance when he was working in a small studio. I noticed via f'book your studio looks small so maybe it's a trick worth keeping up your sleeve. I think it helps see the composition although I have never used it.
The painting is actually quite powerful in a macabre way for me, the missing teeth makes this seem a real skull, perhaps from an archaelogical dig, with parts missing, eaten by scavengers etc. I really did think of the Phantom comic book character as I had a skull ring when a kid. It's not for me a piggy bank at all, it's a potent reminder of our mortality. It really jumps out at you. I find it quite confronting.