I know I took some time off from posting, but I'm sure people can relate with it being Christmas and all. So many family get-togethers, so many... so many. Anyway, I hope you had a great Chistmas and a wonderful New Year. One of the things I'll be doing these next few days is plan out some fine-art shoots and come up with some deadlines for the rough draft of my second book. I have some YouTube videos planned, and am fleshing out ideas for a book trailer, so hopefully there are some big things to come in 2016.
But now, picking up where we left off with my Classical Reinterpretation series, we have the Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci and one of the most famous works of art.
Leonardo da Vinci, like his painting, is also well known the world over. But da Vinci wasn't just an artist, he was an Italian polymath who's expertise varied among a number of different subjects and genres. He was an inventor, a mathematician, sculpture, painter, astronomer, writer, cartographer and geologist... among other things. He lived between 1452 and 1519 and died in France after a lifetime of achievements and creative works.
Today, two of his works top the list of the most famous and visited pieces of art. Sitting at first and second, they are the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, respectively.
The Mona Lisa, painted in 1503 and completed in 1506, is a small portrait thought to portay Lisa del Giocondo, a member of the affluent Gherardini Family of Florence. It was painted with oils on a white panel. Interestingly, the Mona Lisa wasn't a particularily famous painting until it was stolen from the Louvre in August of 1911. Among the suspects were Pablo Picaso, who was brought in for questioning by police. Two years later, however, the painting was discovered in the posession of Vincenzo Peruggia an employee at the museum. After it's recovery, the fame of the Mona Lisa skyrocketed, becoming the most visited work of art.
Today, the painting is still on display at the Louvre in Paris, France.
And here is my interpretation of the painting:
I think this was the first recreation I did in the series. And oddly enough, it's the only one with my sister Victoria, who's one of my go-to models. She'll probably kill me for posting this, because she's not too fond of this picture. She doesn't like the expression on her face, but it's my favourite part. I think she captured that odd, slight smile that Mona Lisa has, wonderfully.
If I'm honest, though, this isn't one of my faovurite reinterpretations, but the Mona Lisa is far from a favourite work of art of mine. This image was simple to create, I shot Victoria in the studio, and it only took a couple of shots to get what I wanted, and then cut her out and placed her over the background. The background gave me some trouble. While I'm not too fond of the Mona Lisa painting overall, I really love the background of the original. I love the detail and the variation, and the colour, everything about it. And it was hard finding a suitable background that mimicked the original. I took a ton of shots of various landscapes, hoping something would work, and played around with a lot of them. But I finally settled on this one, because I thought the yellow tones of the field went well with the skin tones and editing I had done on Victoria.
Of all my reinterpretations, it's one of the simplicest I've done. But also being the first, it was sort of like a trial run. I wanted to see if I could pull this off. These images were done for a class project, we could choose to create something like, 15 of our own images with our own theme, or do a number of recreations of classical works of art. I was one of two who picked the classical art variant, which I picked because of my background in fine arts. But I wanted to make sure I wasn't biting off more than I could chew. In the end, I think the series went over pretty well. And while there were a couple of images I wasn't too keen on, I definitely produced some beautiful pieces.
Next, I'll be talking about Saint Sebastian.
If you're interested in seeing other photos in this series, you can find them here.
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And you can check out my debut novel, The Children of Gods and Monsters, in the Amazon store here.
Also check out the prelude to The Children of Gods and Monsters, also on Amazon, here.
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