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Pastoral Landscape w/ mill by Claude Lorraine


Ben
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I am not a purist when it comes to having fun with the scale miniature world.  I do have a fussy - historical, mischievous, evil twin on my left shoulder, but my angelic right shoulder self with a slightly tilted halo is generally in control of my miniature world.  I have a collection of odd little hotwheel type die cast cars that tend to show up in my here and now miniature world, should I actually finish s-o-m-e-t-h-i-n-g in this decade.  (Does the decade end in 2020 or begin in 2020? Good grief, I hope it ends in 2020, or I'm in trouble.)  I attended Guild School Classes in 2014-2016 and Guild Study Program classes and is ANYTHING Finished???

The miniature world does not have to be perfectly scaled, especially when it comes to a painting.

I've been to a lot of museums and there are some huge paintings in the art world.  If you actually painted a miniature of Monet's waterlilies and put it on a table to offer it for sale at a true 1/12th scale, had I not seen it in real life in Pittsburgh, PA , I would have initially thought that miniature is waaayyyy too big... so it needs to fit in an appropriate miniature setting.  Large paintings or small paintings, even when I read about the size of the painting in a book, I am always amazed when I see the original work of art, in person.

Miniatures as Art resides in the soul of their creators.  We, the collectors and We, the artists in the miniature universe have to be open to the Art within us... with painting miniatures, you really do have the best position, you can create at the size you wish and as long as it looks right to the artisan, you have met the criteria of the "Golden Rule", which is simply, its ok to do the math, but trust your own eyes!

 

 

 

 

 

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Thanks for that WM!  It is a dilemma for painters.  If the painting is at the correct ratio but it’s too small to get decent detail. And if it had been just a little bigger, the detail would have substantially better; it doesn’t make any difference if the artist jumps up and down and says “but the scale is correct!”; the better detailed painting will always look better even if it’s slightly bigger and therefore not to scale.  

I think that the miniature painter needs to approach the painting trying to get it as small as it can get, while still getting great detail.  If you throw into the equation the original size ratio, you will not help the quality.  I could use better magnification (I have good microscopes at work), but I’m still limited by the brush size.  

In theory it’s possible to paint an oil painting replica with a homemade brush and microscope I guess, but I’m not sure that I could do it.  I think I’d rather leave that to someone else.  The collector would have to be really wanting perfection in actual ratio.  The whole thing would (to me) be a novelty painting at that point, and that’s fine and impressive but it’s not something I want to do. 

Thanks for making this a topic of discussion because it’s neen something I’ve been bothered about and didn’t know how to approach it. 

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We can pixel a painting to death... with a scanner and printer... but the collectors appreciate the hand and eye of an Artist!  I've got some printed pictures that I do enjoy; but a real painting is a lot more fun!

I don't think it would be much fun painting with a microscope. 

I did tell my eye doc, that in my opinion, all those old paintings with halos effects in religious paintings were because the painter had cataracts.  See this is my historical, mischievous, evil twin on my left shoulder talking to her eye guy.  I would really love to time travel and have the ability to gaze into the eyes of the artist to see if they did or did not have cataracts... would be fun to read and discover if my theory could be proven.  We are fortunate to live in this period of time, where we can remove cataracts.

 

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Funny 😉   Your evil twin eh?  It very well could be cataracts.  I’d never thought of it before,  but maybe yes.  I’m glad you said that about a real painting!  Today the phone pictures are so amazing that you could have a whole gallery in the palm of your hand..but they aren’t real are they? Nope.  

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