standing alone

Flowers

Sometimes you want to sit down and draw. If you're lucky, there's something good in front of you. Other times, you have to draw flowers.

These ones were on the side table, so I drew them.

Guy Fawkes Balloons

I missed Halloween, so this can be my Guy Fawkes day contribution.

Because the harvest was coming to an end they thought it would be symbolic to burn him alive in a giant pumpkin. This picture has four mini pumpkins with one mini Guy Fawkes in each. In the end they couldn't find a pumpkin humongous enough in which to put him so the idea came to nothing.

Ostracised Tête-Tête

Flowers on my lap while sitting on the train.

A drawing made on an iPad by Tarragon.

Flowers for Anno 2013

You have to start somewhere.

A still life by Tarragon, done on the iPad with Procreate.

Mortality

I went to Kew Gardens in the summer of last year and purchased this plant.  I call it a name other than what it is known by.  It used to be a strong, hale and happy plant.  It had the look of one that enjoys conversation.  In retrospect I wonder if it was the sort of enjoyment that is valued only by those who lack almost all other pleasures, like a man who never sees the tent we call the sky.  I don't know.  All I know is it never told me it was suffering for want of light and almost overnight its strength failed, and now I am sure it will die, although it lives by the window.  You can not take death masks of plants or I would have done so.

The Tulip Hour

Mimosa

The plant, not the drink.

Another iPad still-life by Tarragon. He's aiming here for a more painterly style: Camille Pissarro rather than Dutch still-life, if you will. It's possible - even natural - to make everything very sharp in iPad paintings, just as it was in the golden age of Dutch still life painting. The gleaming precision of it was part of the point, after all.

But a digital picture is not about the materiality of possessions. How could it be? It barely exists in itself. So instead Tarragon has opted to play an impressionist-style game of focus, in which the subject is not the objects in the picture, but the light streaming through them, and the reflections they cast.

A boot for Saint Valentine

People sometimes complain that holidays are ruined by materialism. But really, we all live in a material world. And so I made this picture of material things as a Be My Valentine. Everybody likes flowers,  after all, and quite a few of us like boots, too.

Wikipedia tells me that 190 million cards are exchanged each year on Valentine's day. This, presumably,  won't contribute to that statistic.


The picture was made with pencil, watercolours, and several kinds of marker.

iPad drawing: The Blue Plate

There's a school of thought that holds that every still-life is a memento mori, whether the artist has included a skull or not. The idea is implicit in the French word for the genre, nature mort.

The thing about still-lives is that they're supposed to be still. But those done on the iPad are anything but. The colours are too lively, the strokes record every gesture of the artist's finger. And of course, in a literal sense, they are alive with the electricity that maintains the image on our screens.

Of course, in its original incarnation the still-life was about conspicuous consumption. What was best in life was for the sideboard to groan with gold and silver plate, a big side of bacon, and bones of your enemies. But if that wasn't possible, a painting of it made a good substitute.

iPad still-lives don't work exactly like that either. How exactly they do work is an open question.

Tarragon made this still-life using the brushes app on the iPad.

Still Life Painting on the iPad

There are, generally speaking, two camps in the matter of still life pictures. The first employs the techniques of high realism to celebrate lush materialism and the pleasure of materials. Such painting are invitations to touch, as in the work of Mary Pratt or pronkstilleven of the Dutch Golden Age. The second group, on the other hand, is not concerned with the illusion of reality, but uses more painterly and modernist techniques to emphasize harmony and composition. Through their minimalism and open display of brushwork, such works often verge on abstraction. An example here is Giorgio Morandi.

This still life belongs firmly in the second camp. Tarragon used the Brushes app to create it on an iPad.

Lillies

Some lillies I had lying around my apartment.
I rendered them with a brush-pen and used the computer for the colours.

I can't draw things like this without thinking of Hokusai. It's bad for the self-esteem.

Irises

A quick watercolour still-life. I came across these in the park adjacent to viale Michelangelo in Florence.

Still life on the iPad

Tarragon fingerpainted this still life using the brushes app on the iPad.

Poinsettias, backlit.

Tarragon made this small still life using the Brushes app on his girlfriend's iPhone. It should appear on the screen the same size as the original finger-painting.

A preparatory sketch for an oil painting

Tarragon doesn't usually bother with elaborate concept drawings. This one is a bit more free-standing than usual.