Artists Blog Search

I just got listed on the Artists Blog Search. This is a useful site which uses a Google custom search to search listed artist blogs. If your blog isn’t there then you can drop them an email and get yourself listed. Sure can’t do any harm.

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What we can learn from Vincent Van-Gogh

Vincent Van-Gogh is one of the tragic figures in the world of art. On the one hand he was fanatical, revolutionary, of fragile sanity, obsessive and depressive. On the other he left a legacy both of the paintings he created but also in terms of the style that he painted in that prepared the way in the development of art for those who followed him.

However, in light of all the superlatives there is something that can easily be missed – namely that Vincent Van Gogh created all his work in a single decade.

Vincent’s early work was done starting in 1880. He dramatically shifted style a mere seven years later and created his famous colorful works in the remaining three years until his death in mid 1890. In the middle of this he spent a year voluntarily commited in a mental institution.

And yet look at what he accomplished in a decade. He learned to draw and paint, completed studies and produced hundreds of works many of which are world famous iconic images. Admittedly he was crazy, but could you manage that much in so little time?

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Spring views (Heb: “Nofei Aviv”)

In case you’re wondering, the title is a pun. The picture (now finished) was painted of a view view from the end of the last street in the Nofei Aviv neighbourhood of Beit Shemesh. Hmmm. Well, I thought it was funny.

Anyway, as I said another picture finished. The image above is a bit less than optimal but it get it more or less.

The sky was done with a broad (1″) soft brush and I like the effect. It is ultramarine and phthalo blues and titanium white. Moving down, pallete contains sap green, ochre and azo lemon yellows and burnt sienna and I have used ultramarine and titanium white for getting the distance.

All in all I like it a lot. Now I just need to take a good photo of it and upload it to my website.

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rafistern.com website upgraded

If you go to my website and you are particularly sharp eyed, you may notice that I have just switched on the new version of the site. If you can’t see the difference, then don’t worry – that’s the idea .

The new site is built in the latest version of ASP.Net instead of the old one that was in older obsolete ASP technology. As you can see, it looks more or less the same, but underneath it is all new.

The only practical difference is that if you have an old bookmark to the site, then you may want to update it. All the URLs work the same except they have “.aspx” at the ends of the page names instead of “.asp”. There is a redirector there to help you get where you want, even if you use an old URL but you can save time by bookmarking the new one.

In the next while, I will now be adding new things to the site, so keep watch.

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Summer’s coming

The weather has taken a distinct turn towards summer. The last few days and the weekend have been really hot. It’s not often we have a hot Purim with no rain but I suppose that’s because of the leap-year (the Jewish one, that is).

Yesterday was way into the 30′s Celcius, even hotter than the day before and today is going to follow suit.

I started a new Springpainting on Saturday night. the view is from Nofei Aviv in Beit Shemesh looking north west towards Yishi and Tzora. You can see the ridge of hills behind Tzora. The houses on the right are the edge of Beit Shemesh.

I still need to work a bit on the colors but it is almost there. Good going.

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