40 SHADES OF

The world wide brouhaha surrounding the release of the movie ‘40 Shades of Gray’, got me looking again at Picasso’s series of etchings ‘Fragments de Corps de Femme’. There’s a female buttocks - executed in an economical 4 lines in the early thirties which is an unforgetable masterpiece of abstraction. Well, here’s my watercolour ‘Derriere’ - which simply means ‘bum’ or ‘butt’ in French.

Anthony Charles Lynton ‘TONY’ BLAIR 1953 — 

There’s a huge ‘warts and all’ portrait of this former UK Prime Minister in the National Portrait Gallery’s current exhibition. It’s by Alastair Adams and it’s overwhelming.

One of history’s political connundrum’s, Tony Blair gets full marks for being: a brilliant left wing party strategist, a Churchillian parliamentary debater, a master of the press conference, a key negotiater and peacemaker in Northern Irelandand and one of those very rare politicians who had the ability to make millions love him unconditionally. But then many astute and well advised observers say he warrents: a dunce’s hat for his porkies to Parliament — which led directly to the invasion of Iraq — and the mess the world is in today.

Anyway, I decided to hace a crack at Tony Blair’s amazing face — but on a much smaller scale.

Here it is.

ECCE HOMO

The amazing technical dexterity of the pre-raphelites has always amazed me — and, because several of them leaned towards agnosticism and even athesism, so has their choice of biblical subject matter. Their religious paintings can therefore have had only one raison d’etre: to generate the millions of pounds they so often did —  no mean feat for living artists in the late nineteenth century.

Anyway, all that aside, I thought I’d have a crack at a religious portrait. And here it is — probably subliminally influenced by Johannes Grunewald’s paingings — and available at a peppercorn price.

MADE IN JORDAN

We're on holiday in Amman at the moment.
But I did manage to find another amazing face to paint, and despite the fact that a similar image has been done to death commercially, I decided to give it a go.

Che 1928 - 1967

STEPHANE CHARBONNIER

CHARB
21.8.1967 - 7.1.2015
Formerly editor and cartoonist at
Charley Hebdo in Paris

DARK DAYS

NOTHING TO ADD...

TUTANKHAMUN - IS HE THE MOST FAMOUS EGYPTIAN?

Tutankhamun's burial mask in Cairo Museum

Well, is this the most famous Egyptian?
From a Western perspective, probably yes, although I suppose some Egyptians may have other views - eg Nasser, Sadat and Nobel Prizewinner Najib Mahfouz perhaps.
Anyway, I set myself the task of painting gold with watercolour.
It was easier than I thought it would be.
Want to give it a try?
Come on holiday to La Petite Galerie and we'll give it a go.
You can get more information here:
http://www.saatchiart.com/RayJohnstone