If one says “Red” (the name of a colour) and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds. And one can be sure that all these reds will be very different. Josef Albers Obviously our rainbow is not going to suffice… even with the addition…
in bed with… the Sennelier family
I could have subtitled this post “12 shades of grey” but perhaps, just perhaps mind you, it might have been going a little too far… and yet they exist: Cold grey, Blue grey, Light grey, English grey, Yellow grey, Grey green, Reddish brown grey, Medium grey, Violet grey, Grey deep, Payne’s grey, Charcoal grey… see…
In bed with… Jim Cobb (aka Mr Chroma)
Leaving the Chroma factory after been given a visit of the whole place, I muse that I’ve only got half of a story. Yes, I’ve collected evidence: the colour spills, the empty tubes, the rolls of labels, the large vats with paint decanting while others are being stirred with the biggest ‘spoon’ before their contents…
In bed with… Ochre
Ochre? Ocher? I’ll choose the first spelling… No offense intended, ochre is simply more visually pleasing to me, in all probability only because it’s closet to the French spelling I have always been familiar with. Oddly in English (being the baffling thing it is) ochre and ocher are pronounced the same. Personal taste will make…
in bed with… Master Paint-maker David Coles
Early in the 90’s, David Coles brought from England to Australia his passion for pigments, his expertise in art supplies and his youthful determination. What he could not know at the time though is that this red continent would offer him something most unexpected and surprising: a desire for new colours… David’s first factory’s location…
In bed with… Isabelle Roché & Margaret Zayer
Hard to believe Margaret is not a direct descendant of one of Renoir’s favourite model… perhaps that rather cocky girl tying the ribbon of her hat? Or that one leaning her whole body to better hear her lover’s words in her ear… Although today positively more in the vein of La Femme à la collerette…
In which you understand why your paper pad has a drawing of a hot-air ballon on the cover…
I must have been no more than 8 or 9 when I spent a few weeks at my best friend’s family holiday home in Varagnes. I had heard much about it before but somehow that year, for the first and one time, I joined the crazy clan there. My friend Natalia was the youngest of that…
The very first spoof of the Mona Lisa…
I always thought the very first spoof of the Mona Lisa was Marcel Duchamp’s more than naughty LHOOQ but it turns out I was totally wrong. Way before his 1919 ‘appropriation’ another artist, Eugène Bataille (according to Wiki better known under the name of Arthur Sapeck but I had never heard of either until yesterday)…
In bed with… Daniel Smith
(Well, John Cogley really, CEO of Daniel Smith art materials and the man who, for all intents and purposes, has now become Dan Smith) Any reason that would require to go to Seattle I would probably have been game for… I’ve always wanted to go there and see for myself this city of which I’ve…
“A journey of a thousand strokes starts with one good brush.”*
Imagine my excitement when I heard there was a little town, Kumano, which was deemed THE brush capital of Japan and found out there were more than eighty brush makers still making brushes traditionally, a brush festival, a national calligraphy competition, a “day of the brush” week held there yearly AND a brush museum… Had…
in bed with mona lisa 