Picture a Week

Sometime in 1944 this little girl was taken from her home and forcibly placed on a train. That train took her to a place that she did not return from. I know this, as the photograph this is painted from belonged to a german officer, and the place she is standing is the path through to one of the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Berkenau. I don’t know her name, I don’t think anyone who did know her name survived. I do know she came from Carpatho-Ruthenia and probably came from or came through the Berehovo Ghetto and that the photograph was taken in May 1944.

I sometimes wonder what was in the pale. I also wonder if, like so many children was just so ‘trusting’ of the adults around her.

Trusting, trust: reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety of a person or thing.

“I’ve done nothing wrong under the rules”.
“I’ve followed the law.”
“You need to Register here.”
“Government Censorship is for you own good.”
“You have nothing to fear, if you have nothing to hide.”

Sound familiar. Read it lately in the newspapers or heard them on the TV? It should scare the pants off you as these are the same words that Nazi Germany pushed around all through World War II. The best part, what the Nazi Party did (extermination, holding and executing prisoners without sentence, secret police, stamping out terrorism, killing the opposition party members) was actually all within the “law”. When they gained power in Germany they rewrote the laws to suite them, then told everyone they were acting within the ‘law’. Funny old world, not much has changed.

I like to think she has a pretty name like Ilona, Eva or Katalin. Did I cry when I painted her? Often.

Well I was away on holiday and the picture I started to paint on holiday is taking me a little longer than expected because a) when you on holidayz you don’t tend to have any regular time slots to paint and b) it’s bigger than I was expecting and c) I want it to be good.

I’m currently working on it at home as it’s not realy safe for work (nuddy pictures!) and I’ll replace this blurb with the real blurb when it’s finished.

So I asked someone very special in my life what would they like painting to hang on their wall. It was a bit of a loaded question as at the time she was playing Moshi Monsters. So this week I am pleased to present to you Zommer from Moshi Monsters. Yes he is some sort of zombie mash up.

Ahh the hours and days spent on the LAN with Warcraft 2. Well this has nothing to do with that. One of my friends (hi Gary) asked if I could paint him a picture of an Orc with a broken tooth. Yup, that’s the brief; one Orc,one broken tooth.

Good job I’m a Roleplayer, Gamer and general geek. I present to you this week, “Lok’tar” which is Orcish for “Smash your face” (actually it does have a real meaning – Victory!).

“Thanks for taking a poke at that, urm, the catch a ride, not my momma’s parts”. Scoota, brilliant. Since my internet provider (Thanks BE) sold out to Sky, (thank for nothing anti-monopoly committee) my packet loss has been stupidly high. No tinternet games for me, no Planetside 2 >:(

Fortunatly I was able to pick up Borderlands 2 which came free with a spare copy of Borderlands 1 (of courseI already have it). Lots of shoot-em-in-the-face LAN action has been occuring in my life, and for once my wife actually likes an FPS game. Of course she now preferes to play Borderlands 2 on my PC, so I will have to purchase one of her own in the Steam sale.

With classic quotes like “Catcharide” and “Kill him my minion” I was just crusin’ for a bruisin’ on the whole Borderlands cell shading. So this is to add a little variaty to the collection, based on a combination of cell shading, cartoon imagery and of course Borderlands.

Welcome to Punchy, who happens to be my Beserker characters name. Guess what, he doesn’t use Rocket Launchers.

Ahhh, well I have a new follower on Twitter, so I thought it was about time I painted him. The idea came from a picture of Rob in his full armour, and one of his friends said “You need a Halo”.

I enjoyed the kingfisher picture from a few weeks ago and wanted to know if I could produce something similar but all under my own steam. See what you think with week twenty eight, Sir Robert.

P.S. To truely appreciate the picture, you need to stand far away. To help with that, this is what it looks like ‘smaller’

Oh bugger. When your painting a picture of someone who you haven’t seen in twenty five years, you can only hope you don’t offend them. One of my friends on Facebook (Hi Chris) changed is profile picture the other day (for all of one day), but one day is all that required to steal photo’s from there. Actually I asked his permission first.

Anyhow, the original picture had been fed through one of those aging photoshop filters and it was the sepia style thatI liked. So I’ve gone for a mix of a single colour and black to try and get a sepia look PLUS (no expense spaired in the excitement department here) a two area tone effect, where the background is one colour and the foreground the other.

Hope you enjoy and lets hope Chris likes it as well 😀 As usual click the image for a full the screen version.

I supposed when your painting fifty two pictures in the space of a year, some of them are going to look a duffer. I was following a particular technique in one of my books, and on reflection neither my painting or the example look that good.

Saying that, tastes are all different and some of you out there may actuall find it pleasing to the eye. Oh and the thing by the trees on the left, It’s a well.

This one was complete at the start of the week, but I don’t want to get into the habit of posting early and I do like to keep you all in suspense.

A gentle landscape this week.

Bit of an experiment this week. Whenever I paint portraits I outline areas of colour. Before I apply any paint the picture looks like a complicated paint by numbers but without the numbers.

So this week I’ve painted a "paint by numbers" without the numbers. That is I’ve blocked in some areas and purposely applied flat washes of the same colours to different parts of the picture. In fact I"ve used eleven colours in all, and because they are water colours and near impossible to mix to the same colour again, I painted each "˜number" at the same time and all in one sitting.

Stand back (or shrink the picture) to get the best effect. I quite like it and might paint a few more piccies through the year in the same style.