Amedeo Modigliani 1884 – 1920
Modigliani is one of my favorite artists and I did several studies of his paintings one summer. He had a rather sad life and died of Tuberculosis at the age of 35. Tragically, his live-in lover, Jeanne Hébuterne, who was nine months pregnant with their second child, jumped out a fifth floor window, two days after Amedeo's death.
The artist had an unique style with the elongated necks and fingers and rather somber faces on his paintings of people. His nudes were his forte, although he studied landscapes and still-lifes as well. When I painted my studies, I put other people's faces in them rather than the faces the artist used. Neither of these two paintings is finished as my daughters didn't like them, so I stopped working on them.
by Modigliani 
Kathy after Modigliani by me
This was done in acrylic.
by Modigliani
Suzy after Modigliani by me
Please pardon the grass, it is not in the painting.
This was done with oil stick. I prefer this style as opposed to the acrylic.
BTW, here is an update on Suzy. She was due to be home in Illinois today, but decided to stay a few more days. She is done working at the school and is going to another place in Africa that is famous for its beaches. This will be her R & R. She is going with a group of people and staying in another host home. The weekend before, she hiked Mt. Longonot, a dormant volcano that has a forest at the bottom of the crater.
I will go back and finish the two paintings above as they've rather grown on me. I had a hard time making such long fingers and necks. I am an illustrator by nature and when I drew hands, they always looked like hands. The hand in the top one looks like a chicken to me and the one in the bottom looks like a baby octopus. They will be changed.
The one below, I cannot find the original Modigliani on the net, but this happens to be one of my accidental favorites. I almost destroyed it because I didn't like what was happening so I took a scrub brush to it underneath very hard running water. Suddenly, I stopped, held it up and decided I liked it with the scrubbed out look. 
After the Bath by me after Modigliani
Acrylic on paper
thesnakeandiandthebutterfly 
I like all of them. I love your paintings, Pam. Can't believe you were destroying this last painting.Without knowing much about his art, nevertheless, I have always enjoyed his paintings. I like those elongated bodies. Very interesting, and I have always wondered why he choise to paint people all stretched out like that.
Your work it is very unique after the washed out Pam. It sure is!thank you for sharing :)you know my love for art, I am a sucker knowing more about artists and I can have a desk top of an art and wake up at night and just stare at it, or copy it and then give it away to a friend… well reading biographies of artists is a passion of mine,if any of your loyal readers wants to know a little more please allow me to add this link that I did visit 38362839482774 times and did read about him 🙂http://amedeo-modigliani.paintings.name/:yes:
In reading info about Modigliani, it turned out he destroyed lots of his early work. So sad, because he had such a short life! With the painting above, the white cloth was too white and stuck out like a sore thumb. I couldn't stand it. I managed to scrub out just enough of the white. Now, to me, it looks old, as if it's painted on wood. I might do more extensive reading on him and maybe somewhere it will say why he chose to paint like that.
That "scrubbed out look"…looks good! :yes:
ellinidata, I followed your link and read the article. I bookmarked it as well. Site also has some interesting links. I will enjoy investigating all these when I have time. Thanks for the link.
A friend mailed me this (I do not think he took it) and it reminded me very much of a famous Modigliani nude.[img]http://i296.photobucket.com/albums/mm163/derWandersmann/cute01.jpgPam, feel free to delete this after you've seen it.
Yes, the last one looks excellent :up:
You sure do nice things.I painted quite a lot back in the day, and remember the nice, tactile pleasure of the oil sticks.
Hi Pam, good post. Glad to hear your daughter will be back soon. Nice paintings. 🙂
Hi Lady Pam, thanks for this post, i didn't know him before but now i do. Great paintings. 😉
Angeliki: Thanks for the link. I meant to put a link from Wiki but forgot. Yours is better anyway cuz it seems more personal.Linda: I've bookmarked it too for more in depth reading later.derWandersmann: Very much a Modigliani pose. I don't plan on deleting it. Andy and Darko: Thanks. After discovering how the scrubbing effect looked, I did the same to some other paintings later. But you can only do this scrubbing under water while the paint is still a little damp. I've also discovered you can lightly sand away some of the paint that is already dried but you have to be very gentle.Allan: Thank you so much. I really do like working with oil sticks and love that texture too.Carol: Thanks. Yes, I'll be glad when she's back. Leazz: Thank you. I'm glad I introduced you to him. Go to Angeliki's link to read lots more about him. Or just Google him because there is lots of info and images. I have a big art book of his work. There are two or three movies made about Modigliani, none of which I've seen. It mentions them in Wikipedia. Andy Garcia played Amedeo and would love to see that one. I could also see Johnny Depp playing him. 😀
LOL … it seems that Photobucket found it objectionable … it's gone. If you want it, I can email it; I don't know how to post it directly, because it has no URL.
Andy Garcia :up: Johnny Depp? :eyes: 😀 Thanks Lady Pam. I will check them out 😉
@ Linda,you are more than welcome :heart:PSI also answer to the names,Angeliki,or Angel:)
The morphing face behind her left shoulder in: "Kathy after Modigliani by me" is not after anyone else but yourself.Who was the model for the scrubber?
Originally posted by derWandersmann:
With XP; right click on the image and save as whatever in your My Pictures album. Then open a photo album in Opera and import images from there.
WL: Actually I see a quail standing on her left shoulder rather than a morphing face. No model for 'woman with white cloth'. It is a study of one of Modigiliani's paintings.
Wow, what a magnificent picture. I clicked on it to make it larger and I could see all kinds of animals. No Homers though. Well, maybe one.
It is a mixture of faces and a goldfish too. But God does it better:http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=38865&src=eoa-iotdCan you see two Homer Simpson's? One turns into Abe Simpson.
I saw a wolf head and several faces, but no Homer.
Yes only one but he has a distorted mirror image. Sideshow Bob is on there too.Talking of mirror images, can you see a Santa? The lower half looks similar to a bear's head and it's as if you are looking down on it and seeing it's reflection below it.No prizes for guessing what I had nothing better to do than, when I was a child.
It's above and behind the fool, below and behind the ape skull and to the west of the blue patch of the Bering Sea showing through the cloud.It isn't a very good likeness. All the right bits but not necessarily in the right order.
hiked Mt. Longonot– the forest sounds very interesting, I'll have to google it! you will both have so much fun enjoying her accounts! I hope she arrives back healthy and happy to you.your work is astounding, Pam. I really like your renditions of the girls, amazing stuff. I can understand, perhaps, how they didn't care for the elongated effects on themselves… I wonder now that they are grown, do they appreciate them at all? how will you change the hands…why is he a favourite artist of yours? finally, btw, what an incredibly tragic account of his life, love and second child!!!! what became of his first child?
Thanks Jill. My daughters still don't like my rendition of them. They will get them anyway when I am gone. I may do Kathy's over with oil stick, add more hair over her forehead, tilt the head more, define the hand more. With Suzy's, I want to fix that octopus looking hand so it doesn't look like that….define the fingers….or something.I like alot of Modiglian's work because of the colors he used. Not sure if I like all the somber faces though.Found this on Wiki about his first child:"Modigliani's sister in Florence adopted their 15-month old daughter, Jeanne (1918-1984). As an adult, she wrote a biography of her father titled, Modigliani: Man and Myth."Would love to find the book and read it.
Perhaps the problem will become less nowadays, with so many digital methods to steal images.
Holy Cow dW! That's really expensive for a used book. Not many copies must have been made then for it to be that pricey. I will definitely look for it in the library. However, I have found that books and videos get stolen (and some defaced) from the library. It has a great art book and video selection and went to check out a video about Camille Claudel again. I had seen it two years before. Found out it had not been returned for over a year. :irked: Checked an art book out once only to find that some pages had been ripped out. I called the library immediately because I didn't want to return it with them thinking I had done it. The lady said to put a note inside with the pages missing then hand it in personally and show them the note. Makes me so mad when people destroy or steal from the library. Those books and videos are for all of us to enjoy.
You'd better stick to the public libraries, then; get a load of this price:http://www.amazon.com/Modigliani-man-myth-Jeanne/dp/B0007K0M4C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245078045&sr=1-1
I love the colours! I always messed up when it comes to colours!Well, not just libraries! I am a victim too! I got a very rare art magazine a few years ago and my 'pal' borrowed and never returned it back to me even after I just found out that she has moved out from town! 😥 aaargh:'( I curse her everyday!P/sYeay Suzy is coming back!
dW: You're right about that.Zulia: Thank you. I don't loan my stuff out anymore. If someone wants to see one of my books, they can come visit and we can have coffee or something while they look at the book.Yep, Suzy's coming back. Just did a post of her email of her returning.
Careful with those curses … they can hurt you.
Very beautiful work! I like the addition of the grass, it adds a freshness.
Only thing is Lois, the grass is in my yard. I had nothing to set the painting on when photographing it. There are a couple other paintings where the grass is visible and I like the looks of it. Maybe I should think of painting the grass into the painting.
Painted freshness, of course.
How would painted grass add freshness?
Ah fresh paint. Of course.We call that coloured oil in our galleries. But only drips use it.
LOL Sorry, but Pam will tell you that I can't resist a line like that.
p.s. No need to be sorry dW.
Oh but I love drips. Watercolour is best, of course, for this drip effect, however, I have successfully done drips with oil and acrylic as well. Both oil and acrylic don't drip well on their own. With oil, the painter must slap on some turp or linseed oil to the wet paint on the canvas to move it around and make it drip; or mix it with the paint dollop first before placing on canvas. Archivally, I don't know what effect this will have. May crack off in ten years.With acrylic, the artist must add lots of water as he/she is painting. Acrylic tends to dry very fast so one must make decisions and paint very fast.
I see the exceptional colour in his work, very intense or saturated? would you say? if your daughters need a buyer someday lol if I'm still around… the book sounds interesting…
Not so much saturated in the two examples above…but intense, yes. The colors are more saturated in much of his other work. I hope the library has a copy of the book.
I think the one with Andy Garcia is the most recent but don't quote me on that. I wouldn't mind seeing all of them.
I just ran into one of those M movies a few weeks ago but didn't watch it. I don't know which version it was. I like the one with the white top best.
Love them!!! The last one is beautiful!!!! Sometimes accidents turn out to be fantastic!!!!!
Thanks Henar. That's why I never freak out when something goes wrong. Somehow it surprisingly seems to work. A happy accident means a sweet surprise.
My dad always called watercolour "the art of the happy accident". The implication, of course, is that the "art" involved is the openness to, and recognition of, the happy accident when it occurs. Then, of course, comes the bit of capitalising on it … that's no accident.
Your dad was right dW. I was never one of those who paints between the lines. I love the looseness of watercolor, the puddles, runs and drips, at the beginning. Then, if I saw 'something' and wanted to accentuate it, that's what I did. I took many a workshop where we'd have a model. The background was a brick wall. There was a few artists who painstakingly drew in every brick on the wall, or pattern on the costume the model was wearing. Then paint with watercolor. I was the only one whoever got on the floor and immediately sprayed the paper, splash pools of color and move it around a bit, then let it dry during break. THEN I'd do a very light pencil sketch of the model and apply a bit more paint. Somehow I was able to put the model into a totally different environment than just sitting in front of a brick wall. I'll have to get some of my old watercolors out and photograph them. It's really hard to explain what I do without showing the actual product.
In fact, when looking at the three paintings I did above, the first one I was way too tight. Was not adding very much water or medium to the acrylic. Must have had other things on my mind and NOT 'in the zone'.The second, I was much looser with the oil stick. It's impossible to get intricate detail with oil stick and I love to blend the colors.The third one…THAT's the way I paint usually….much looser.
http://my.opera.com/thetomster/albums/showpic.dml?album=799844&picture=10848924
Thanks for that dW.
Good work, great legend i love she is great,WERDANDERSMANN you are here nice to see you again.