'Harbor' - Oil Pastel on Paper

 

'Factories' - Oil Pastel on Paper

 

P.G. Wodehouse

The feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet Jeeves were the creations of the infinitely well-meaning and later on much-misunderstood humorist named P.G. Wodehouse. Wodehouse’s life at this time was not going well when he joined the London branch of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. He was unsuited for it and found the work baffling and difficult, but he would come every day eager to write for magazines. But between 1908 and 1915, he created unforgettable characters that made him famous. Psmith was a strikingly original character based on hotelier and impresario Rupert D’Oyly Carte, whose monocle, studied suavity and stateliness of speech Wodehouse cleverly adopted for his character. “Something New” became his first farcical novel and also best-seller and although some of his later stories were gentler and lightly sentimental, it was as a farceur that he became known. Later in the same year, "Extricating Young Gussie” about Bertie and Jeeves was published. He wrote about them for the rest of his life.

His unwise broadcasts from German radio to the US, during the Second World War caused great controversy even though they were comic and apolitical. A front-page article in The Daily Mirror stated that Wodehouse "lived luxuriously because Britain laughed with him, but when the laughter was out of his country's heart, ... [he] was not ready to share her suffering. He hadn't the guts ... even to stick it out in the internment camp." Several libraries removed Wodehouse novels from their shelves. Wodehouse never returned to England.

Wodehouse received great praise from many of his contemporaries, including Max Beerbohm, Rudyard Kipling, A. E. Housman and Evelyn Waugh—the last of whom opines, "One has to regard a man as a Master who can produce on average three uniquely brilliant and entirely original similes on each page. However not everyone agreed. The writer Alan Bennet thinks that "inspired though his language is, I can never take more than ten pages of the novels at a time, their relentless flippancy wearing and tedious”. Another literary critic Q.D. Leavis writes that Wodehouse had a "stereotyped humour ... of ingenious variations on a laugh in one place". Sean O’Casey, a successful playwright of the 1920’s called Wodehouse “English literature’s performing flea”. Another critic wrote “It is now abundantly clear that Wodehouse is one of the funniest and most productive men who ever wrote in English. He is far from being a mere jokesmith: he is an authentic craftsman, a wit and humorist of the first water, the inventor of a prose style which is a kind of comic poetry."

F. Scott Fitzgerald

  

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), was an American short-story writer and novelist. "This Side of Paradise" made Fitzgerald famous at the age of 24 and he married Zelda Sayre. "The Beautiful and the Damned" (1922), describes a young man and his beautiful wife, who gradually degenerate into middle age while they wait to inherit a large fortune. Ironically, they finally get it, when there is nothing of them left worth preserving. Perhaps to avoid this the Fitzgerald's together with their daughter led an extravagant disorderly life. Fitzgerald began to drink too much and Zelda suddenly, inexplicably began practicing ballet dancing night and day. In 1930 she had a mental breakdown and in 1932 another, from which she never really recovered.

Through the 1930's they fought to save their life together, but the battle was lost and Zelda was admitted to a sanatorium. His next novel "Tender is the Night" is the story of a psychiatrist who marries one of his patients, who as she slowly recovers exhausts his vitality until he is "a man used up." Unfortunately for Fitzgerald, the book was commercially unsuccessful. With this failure and the despair over Zelda, Fitzgerald was close to becoming an incurable alcoholic. However, by 1937 he recovered enough to become a scriptwriter in Hollywood. In 1939 he began the novel "The Last Tycoon." It was Fitzgerald's last attempt to capture a dream he had for a long time. In its intensity of imagination and brilliance of its expression, it is equal to anything Fitzgerald ever wrote. And it was typical of his luck that he died of a heart attack with the novel only half-finished at the age of 44.

Pen Drawing

 

Pettah pen drawing

 

Digital Art

 

I did this digital drawing with MS Paint, the earliest and most basic form that has been there for many decades. Even here I used the paintbrush, pencil and a few other tools in much the same way that an artist uses when painting normally on canvas. I didn't use any of the special distorting tools. I just applied the paint as an artist would with no special effects and it came out like this...One drawback is it takes a lot of time and is not easy as it looks, but it is very enjoyable.

 

JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER

Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) was an English painter and graphic artist. He is known especially for his luminous, imaginative landscapes and seascapes. A prolific artist, Turner did thousands of sketches, engravings, watercolors, and oils. His interest in the effect of light and color upon form foreshadowed the work of the impressionist.

Turner's works are usually divided into three styles. In his early period, he painted landscapes and historical pictures in quiet tones of green, blue, and brown, using the brighter colors very sparingly. About 1819, after a trip to Italy, a change came over his work. He began to use brighter, purer colors, without dark shadows. During his middle period his works, such as The Fighting Temperaire, became more impressionistic.

Turner became more absorbed in color and light, and the works of his last period grew more abstract. In Burning of the Houses of Parliament and Rain, Steam and Speed light, color and atmosphere dominate; form and subject are barely suggested. Steamer in a Snowstorm shows his use of swirling masses of color to express emotion. These later works were ridiculed by his contemporaries, but they have much in common with 20th-century abstract painting and are now widely admired.

Turner was born in London, the son of a barber. He had very little schooling but early showed a talent for drawing. He entered the Royal Academy school at 14 and first exhibited there at 15. When 24, Turner was elected associate of the Royal Academy. He became a full-timewatercolors member in 1802 and was appointed professor of perspective in 1807. In his will, Turner left most of his works to the British People. About 300 oil paintings and sketches and about 19,000 drawings and water colors are exhibited in the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery, and the British Museum.

He lived in London all his life, retaining his Cockney accent and assiduously avoiding the trappings of success and fame. Intensely private, eccentric and reclusive, Turner was a controversial figure throughout his career. He became more pessimistic and morose as he got older, especially after the death of his father, after which his outlook deteriorated, his gallery fell into disrepair and neglect, and his art intensified. In 1841 Turner rowed a boat into the Thames so he could not be counted as present at any property. He lived in squalor and poor health from 1845. Turner left a small fortune which he hoped would be used to support what he called "decayed artists".

REMBRANDT

 

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606-1669), was a Dutch master of painting and etching. Rembrandt is one of the world's great artists, yet he died in poverty and obscurity. He is most admired for the warmth and humanity of his work. Every human being he painted was portrayed sympathetically. To him, beggars and captains of the guard were equally important. Rembrandt's use of dramatic light areas contrasted to irregular dark spaces was unusual. What he thought important he painted so that light focused on it. Minor details that might be distracting, he left darkened as in shadow.

Rembrandt's main interest was people. Many critics consider his masterpiece to be "The Night Watch" (1642). Rembrandt also did many self-portraits and Biblical landscape studies. Rembrandt was born in Leyden, the son of a prosperous miller. His father entered him in the Academy of Leyden for classical education, but the boy was determined to paint. At about the age of 12, he studied under a dutch artist and, at perhaps 17, began work as a portrait painter.

Rembrandt moved to Amsterdam in 1631 to work as a painter and teacher. In 1634 he was married to wealthy Saskia van Uijlenburgh, whose portrait he painted many times. They took a large house, and Rembrandt started a costly art collection. He was extravagant but his own work was popular, enabling them to live well. In 1642 Saskia died. Rembrandt one of the most productive artists of all time continued to work hard, but he seemed to lose spirit. His art became unfashionable. In 1656 he was bankrupt; his home and art collection were sold to pay creditors. In 1660 he began work in the art shop opened by his housekeeper, Hendrickje Stoffels, and his son Titus. The forlorn Rembrandt became a virtual recluse. After Titus died in 1668 he suffered even greater poverty.

Oil Pastel