Blue

I seem to have a thing for blue right now. An overdose of blue it seems ;)
Here is my latest painting called, well...Blue (tadaa!) ;)

This was supposed to be a detailed, realistic painting but it took it's own course and turned out like this. Looks like a calm serene paintings...but wait a minute, is there something behind her?

I'm actually quite pleased with the end result :)

And here is something to the subject of blue...
one of my alltime favorit songs "Symbhony in Blue" by Kate Bush: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8jL_FAAVsg

Swan princess

Last year there was an exhibition in Helsinki with russian art from the Tretjakov art gallery (link). I really liked most of the artwork and I decided to make a copy of one of the paintings. I chose the beautiful Swan Princess by Mihail Vrubel. Vrubel has a very special painting style and his "unfinished touch" is quite impossible to copy. As I tend to do with my copies this copy turned out pretty "loose". With that I mean that it's not a 100% copy of the painting...it's something similar and I try to learn something from the other artist brush stroke methods, composition and colour use.

I don't regard my copied work as high as my other art, but I love doing copies since it's such a learning experience. It's a common art teaching method that's been used for centuries. Unfortunately it's not possible for me to sit next to the original painting and copy from tha, so what I usually do is that I buy a poster of the artwork. Throughout the painting  process I have the poster next to me. Sometimes I look very closely to the "original" and sometimes hardly at all and I add my own thing to the painting.

Some of my earlier copies are:
Frank Frazetta - Thuvia maid of mars: 
http://nadja-art.blogspot.fi/2012/05/thuvia-maid-of-mars-frazetta-copy.html

Alphonse Mucha - The moon
http://nadja-art.blogspot.fi/2013/08/the-moon-drawing.html
http://nadja-mariina.deviantart.com/art/the-moon-115608267

Gustav Klimt - Mäda Primavesi
http://nadja-art.blogspot.fi/2012/07/tribute-to-gustav-klimt.html

Below is my version of the swan princess. The beautiful original you can see for example here: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Swan_princess.jpg

In honor to the artist Mihail Vrabol I also added a photo of the artist. Next to him is his wife Nadeshda who was a famous opera singer in her time and it is assumed that she is the model for the swan princess.  

Swan princess - Copy of a Mihail Vrubel painting

(50cm x 70cm, acrylic paint on canvas, year created: 2014)

Mihail Aleksandrovitš Vrubel &

Nadezhda Zabela-Vrubel

Interview

Recently I was interviewed for the website Passionhow.com. The interview is part of an ongoing art research project, which studies the origins of passion and what stimulates creativity. Here is the link to my interview: http://www.passionhow.com/nadja-mikkila-portrait-artist/