Original painting of a girl playing video games by contemporary artist Bart Carels.
Title: ‘Quarantine I: Girl with a Black Joypad’
Artist: Bart Carels
Year: 2020
Original Painting
Original painting of an Easter Egg by contemporary artist Bart Carels.
Title: ‘Easter Egg’
Artist: Bart Carels
Year: 2020
This painting developed in an unexpected way. With Easter around the corner, I started painting an egg I boiled that morning. As I progressed, I decided for a change I did not want to paint the real-life background. So, I started to experiment.
I thought about the colors that would work well together and wanted to keep part of the bright orange background. I like blue with orange and I think it goes well with the yellow of the egg as well. So, blue it was. You can clearly see in the video that I did not have very clear idea of what the artwork should end up looking like. I kept changing and trying things and eventually it became a very vibrant and expressive piece. Almost like a can of paint splattered onto the wall behind the egg.
Original Painting
Original painting of some Indonesian herbs and spices by contemporary artist Bart Carels.
Title: ‘Herbs and spices’
Artist: Bart Carels
Year: 2020
The video above speaks for itself, but the progress is similar to what I’ve been doing lately. I prepared my canvas with some gesso, mixed with Vermillion. Then I started to create the lines of my subject with primary cyan to make sure my composition was good enough in terms of size and proportions. Next step was adding in the background and the surface. Then I started filling the plastic containers and finished by adding some smaller details like shadows and highlights.
The herbs and spices I used as a subject come from the Indonesian (in my case Dutch-Indonesian) cuisine.
My dad was born in the Dutch East Indies (a Dutch colony now Indonesia). He was of mixed European and Indonesian descent, meaning his ancestors were both Indonesian and European. When he came to the Netherlands with his parents, brother and sister in the fifties, he took a lot of his country of birth with him. Think of music, food, attitude and behavior. After marrying my (Dutch) mom, my brother and I grew up with both Dutch and Indo influences. This sometimes shows in my art as well.
Anyway, one of the things about my roots I enjoy very much is the food. I like to cook (and eat) and this subject shows some herbs and spices typically used in the Indo cuisine. Now you can see we buy the herbs and spices in these plastic containers because lots of dishes use a lot of this stuff (several teaspoons of each). So better make sure you have some stock!
Showing in the painting (from top to bottom): Coriander (Ketumbar), Candle Nuts (Kemiri), Cumin (Jinten) and Turmeric (Kunyit/Kunir).
Original Painting
Original painting of a Ketchup bottle by contemporary artist Bart Carels.
Title: ‘Time to Ketchup’
Artist: Bart Carels
Year: 2020
Original Painting
Original painting of a glass of lemonade by contemporary artist Bart Carels.
Title: ‘Cool Lemonade’
Artist: Bart Carels
Year: 2020
Original Painting
Original painting of three bell peppers by contemporary artist Bart Carels.
Title: ‘Bell Peppers’
Artist: Bart Carels
Year: 2020
No progress images this time, but a time-lapse video of this speed painting. I thought a video would show the progress even better.
Because I wanted the video to be relatively short (other paintings take days, weeks or even months), my time to put something interesting on the canvas was quite limited. I did not use an under painting but started to paint straight onto the canvas from my reference. I tried to build up the painting in a way that made most sense. First the background, the wooden surface, then the bell peppers and the plastic wrap around them.
Knowing I didn’t have a lot of time caused me to feel some pressure. You don’t want to make a lot of mistakes and you want to work as efficient as possible. It makes you conscious about each and every stroke.
So, less detailed than some other works but just as challenging and maybe even more fun!
Original Painting
