A 3,400 year old painter's palette originating from ancient Egypt.

Missouri Botanical Garden 9/26/23 by Sharon Mollerus

A little experiment where I used only two colours (red and yellow) to paint. I like how the horses almost look like they're glowing.

A lil ceramic paint palette. 🌿

I was thinking back to the first paint cups and palettes I made and how fun it was to explore that project! It was some time since I made any paint cups. Perhaps I will make some new ones! I have been trying out "bubble glazing" recently (it's a glaze technique, that involves ✨bubbles✨) and I can see that working nicely together with those paint cups.

(This one is sold, but there will be a couple new palettes in my upcoming shop-restock, in ca two weeks! Sign up to the email list to be notified.)

Palette of Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse, Open Window, Collioure, 1905

Sofonisba Anguissola (Italian, c. 1532 - 1625): The Chess Game (Portrait of the artist's sisters playing chess) (1555) (via Wikimedia Commons)

As a woman, Sofonisba was barred from the life studio, a restriction sh side-stepped by using herself and her family as subjects. Her most famous painting, The Chess Game (1555), is a wonderfully vivid and affectionate portrayal of her sisters, accompanied by their maid, Giovanna, playing chess -- a game considered to be both intellectual and strategic, attributes not often associated with women at the time. Bejewelled in gold and pearls and dressed in costumes more extravagant than the girls would normally have worn to play in a garden, it’s clear Sofonisba wanted to honour her sisters’ beauty and lively personalities, while demonstrating her own dazzling gifts. Perhaps she was also aware of how ground-breaking her homage was: she was the first artist to portray her family as a primary subject. Her younger sister, Europa, smiles broadly at Minerva to her left -- in itself a radical gesture, as such levity was not considered decorous. Minerva is seen in profile, but her right hand is raised, as if in mock surrender to her superior opponent. To Europa’s right, Lucia, the older sister, looks directly out at us, faintly smiling: her right hand moves a chess piece, while her left holds a captured queen. The five hands we can see in the painting are all active: holding, moving, raising, touching. It’s a rare, playful image of girls employing their wits against each other and having fun. The scene is set in a garden to a backdrop of a misty, mountainous landscape. As the landscape around Cremona is flat, we can only assume that Sofonisba was dreaming of future journeys to distant lands.

Jennifer Higgie, The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution and Resilience: 500 Years of Women’s Self-Portraits

Selbstbildnis vor der Staffelei = Self-Portrait in Front of Easel Johann Baptist Reiter (Austrian; 1813–1890) 1833–36 Oil on wood Wien Museum, Vienna, Austria

"I put my heart and soul into my work, and I have lost my mind in the process."

-Vincent Van Gogh

Thesedia Moment (typical)

Hi! Um, any tips on how to color/shade?

-Because i am beyond terrible at it

m..me?? cooouring? i mean. i hate colouring so much that i flat-col the minimum for character recognition and call it done

if i absolutely HAvE to shade something . i'll use the :shrug: shortcut of starting with the base colour, then tweaking the Saturation/Lightness bars: -shadow: lower saturation and lightness -light: whatever saturation, higher lightness

if the character is somewhere with a distinct colour theme, i'll try to shift the base/shadows/lights to that colour.

likewise if there's a distinct coloured light source, i'll make the light on the char similar to that source

imagine me sitting on one section of the colour wheel. and walking toward the destination colour. just picking up colours in between. idk how legit it is, but i'm doing it

sometimes i'll be all srs and try detailed light/shadows but. it ends up makin my drawing too busy. a mess.

CORRECT: try to replicate that light source IRL or thru reference so u can figure out why it looks wrong, then correct your placements

INCORRECT, BECAUSE I'M LAZY: do a simple shape-based cel shade and let the audience's brain finish the job 😂

also i try not to use pure black or pure white for shading. i used to paint the night sky as 100% (zero lightness) black and the moon as 100% (ALL LIGHTNESS) white and my instructor wanted to fling me out a window. i could see it in their eyes. as they gently explained how IRL conditions are rarely 100% black or 100% white. maybe the night sky, depending on the conditions,, (if u actually colour drop a photo) is like 9% lightness with a tinge of blue. the moon is 96% lightness tinged orange. idk

Spent the past few days watching Layers of Fear (2023) walkthroughs

This delicious moss green glaze detail was a delightful surprise. You have to look close to see it though.

Here is a heads up for the painters! 🎨 I will be restocking my shop soon with a few paint palettes (amongst other things, like pumpkins etc). Aboout one week from now - you can join my email list to be notified and see a preview: here.

Thank you all! 🤩

Palette of J.M.W. Turner

Joseph Mallord William Turner, Three Studies of Clouds and Rain over the Sea and Coast, c.1826-40

What I long for is the freedom of going about alone, of coming and going, of sitting in the seats of the Tuileries, and especially in the Luxembourg, of stopping and looking at the artistic shops, of entering churches and museums, of walking about the old streets at nights; that's what I long for; and the freedom without which one cannot become a real artist. Do you imagine that I get much good from what I see, chaperoned as I am, and when, in order to go to the Louvre, I must wait for my carriage, my lady companion and family?

Marie Bashkirtseff (Ukrainian, 1858-1884), quoted in Jennifer Higgie, The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution and Resilience: 500 Years of Women's Self-Portraits

Source details and larger version.

Vintage artists and painters are collected here.