Very cool image here by Deviant angelzofdeath. I like the way the image of this beautiful landscape is reflected in the glasses rather than photographed straight on. Not just an ordinary vacation photo, now it’s a piece of art!

Check out more photography by angelzofdeath in her DeviantArt gallery.

A gruesome charcoal drawing by 50v3r31gn. You can’t help but feel bad for this guy staring at his own body parts on display. He’s horrifying but he also looks sad. Very subtle, creepy image.

Have a look at his DeviantArt gallery for more macabre drawings.

In an effort to bring a more diverse array of artists to Dark Matter Magazine, we’ve decided to tap some of the talented people on the web’s biggest and best online art community DeviantArt.com. Ranging from amateur to professional, each of the artist interviews featured here are linked to their DeviantArt galleries. We will also be showcasing individual artworks by several Deviants this week.

The idle of diesel engines, dogs straining at the end of their leash looking for a bit of grass, children scurrying to the concrete buildings that signal relief after hours in the car, all going on with this view in the distance at the "Rest Stop".

Oil on Canvas, 6" X 8"

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One of the highlights of the Vatican Museums for me was seeing Raphael’s The School of Athens (above, from 1509). Born April 6, 1483, Raphael borrowed the likenesses of many of his contemporaries to portray the philosophers, including Michelangelo as Heraclitus and Leonardo da Vinci as Plato. The only two figures that look directly at the viewer are Raphael himself as Apelles (at the right edge) and Francesco Maria della Rovere (or, possibly, Raphael’s mistress) as Hypatia (standing on the left). The School of Athens is more like a class picture of the School of the High Renaissance. I remember standing there and trying to remember who was who. I love how it neatly organizes the world of philosophy, with Plato pointing up to represent metaphysical philosophy and Aristotle gesturing downwards to represent earth-based philosophy. Raphael’s art also stands astride a dichotomy of higher and lower, heart and head, that makes him one of the truly pivotal figures of art history.



When the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood took aim at Raphael as the beginning of the overintellectualization of painting, they aimed poorly. In works such as Raphael’s Transfiguration (above, from 1520, left unfinished at his death), we see both the rigorous organization of Renaissance thinking and the deep spirituality more commonly associated with the “unthinking” Medieval age. Nietzsche saw Raphael’s Transfiguration as embodying both the rational Apollonian and irrational Dionysian types of art. Standing before the Transfiguration in the Vatican museum, I felt greatly moved. The amazing contrast of light at the top of the painting rising above the darkness below truly makes you feel that episode of the New Testament where Jesus takes on a wholly new state of being. To drop Raphael neatly into one category or the other is to lose the magic of his ability to combine both in his art. Descartes’ “Cogito, ergo sum” followed nearly a century after Raphael’s short life ended, but Raphael remains one of the main artistic victims of the Cartesian mind-body duality accepted by Western Civilization even today.



One of the more frustrating uses of great art, for me, is the endless proliferation of the two cherubs at the bottom of the Sistine Madonna (above, from 1513-1514). Most people don’t even know that those cherubs, the subject of countless posters and greeting cards, are actually just a small part of a much larger painting. They’re actually just stock add ons painted in to act as heavenly witnesses to the scene going on above them. Perhaps it’s a sign of Raphael’s genius that such a fragment can still have a hold on popular culture looking for emblems of innocence. Or, perhaps, it’s just another sign that we only see fragments of Old Masters such as Raphael, who are always more complex, more interesting, and infinitely more relevant than we realize.

"Under the dark veil of the night, in a wild and remote place, the greedy criminal murders his victim, snatches his gold and looks to make sure there is no sign of life to betray his fearful deed. He does not see that Nemesis, that terrible aid to justice, is pursuing him, and is about to seize him and deliver him up to its unyielding assistant," wrote Pierre-Paul Prud’hon of his painting Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime (above, from 1808). Born April 4, 1758, Prud’hon painted in the nineteenth century like a Renaissance master time-traveling to the age of Romanticism. Prud’hon painted chiaroscuro as dramatically as Caravaggio in both religious and secular scenes. He painted Justice and Divine Vengeance Pursuing Crime for the Palace of Justice in Paris—an unforgettable visual statement that crime doesn’t pay.



Like his contemporary David, Prud’hon fell under the spell of neo-classicism, especially when depicting the nude figure as in Nude Viewed from Behind (above, from the 1810s). While other artists of his time created such drawings as preliminary work for paintings, Prud’hon employed such draftsmanship for its own sake. You can see hints of da Vinci-esque sfumato in the gentle shading of the figure, who seems more like three-dimensional sculpture than two-dimensional drawing. Although critics often praise Prud’hon for his realism, the figure shown here is clearly part of the tradition of the idealized human form.



When Prud’hon’s mistress and student, Constance Mayer, took her life in 1821, he fell into a deep depression. Prud’hon’s wife and the mother of his children had gone insane years before, so Constance had kept him and his family together. Prud’hon died just two short years later. Before his death, Prud’hon painted his greatest masterpiece, his Crucifixion (above, from 1822). The coiled tension of Christ’s body exemplifies Prud’hon’s mastery of the human body. By turning Christ’s face away from the viewer, Prud’hon shows psychological depth, choosing to leave that moment of anguish suggestively hidden rather than clearly depicted. Knowing the depths of his own anguish, Prud’hon couldn’t bring himself to give Christ’s pain a face, literally. Unfortunately, Prud’hon achieved the midnight blacks of many of his works through the use of bitumen, which has made his paintings decay badly despite the best efforts of conservators. While some artists seem to fade away, Prud’hon literally retreats into the darkness of his own works.

Hello! Wow, im posting more than Im drawing this week. And I have a backlog of comments to reply to! So apologies.Anyhoo, this is a quick sketch for the cgsociety "Uplift" challenge. Its some kind of futuristic priest. Just an idea for how the human characters will look in my image. Crits are welcome, although I know lots of things wrong with this sketch already haha.

Thanks to all who visit
Ken :D

When William Holman Hunt founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with Dante Gabriel Rossetti and John Everett Millais, he probably saw it as a union of equals. Born April 2, 1827, Hunt couldn’t have guessed that the poet-painter Rossetti and the more talented and versatile Millais would eventually overshadow him, almost to the point of erasing him from the history of the Pre-Raphaelites founding. During the Victorian Era, however, Hunt found his proper audience in almost cloyingly religious works such as The Light of the World (above, from 1854). The Light of the World toured extensively during Hunt’s lifetime thanks to the piety of the age. From my perspective, it appears too Thomas Kinkaid-ish in its obvious tugging on the heartstrings. Perhaps our Kinkaid-friendly times will rediscover this side of Hunt, but I think he has much more to offer.



In The Shadow of Death (above, from 1871), Hunt employs the almost photographic realism of Millais along with a symbolism that seems downright Medieval—the main goal of the brotherhood as it tried to turn back the clock to before the Renaissance and Raphael. Hunt paints the adult Jesus stretching in the carpentry shop of his father Joseph, casting a shadow on the wall that prefigures the crucifixion. A woman kneeling near Jesus’ feet sees the shadow on the wall and recoils in horror, seeing her son’s fate literally written on the wall. Where The Light of the World bashes you with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, The Shadow of Death strikes a message with nuance, forcing you to tease out the meaning of the picture and mentally enter into it.



Hunt took his mania for exact detail to the point that he traveled to the Holy Land just to research such works as The Shadow of Death and The Scapegoat (above, from 1856). The Scapegoat is as simple a religious image as you can find without depicting a human face, but the handling of the landscape, especially the majestically purple mountains in the distance, makes this more than just a devotional exercise. Like any good Pre-Raphaelite, Hunt led a colorful life, particularly when he tried to marry his widow’s sister, which was then illegal in England, and left the country to do so. That intrigue doesn’t stand up to the soap operas of Rossetti’s and Millais’ lives, but it does show that Hunt was not a simple follower of social mores. Hunt wrote a memoir near the end of his life giving his side of the story of the origin of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, hoping to rewrite the histories that gave him lesser credit than Rossetti and Millais. In many ways, the success of Hunt most obvious religious works made him a convenient scapegoat for critics hoping to steer public tastes away from such blatant emotional appeals. Sadly, they never looked beyond those showstoppers to see Hunt’s nuanced works lurking in the shadows.

My demo and talk at the Bellevue Artists Association went very well Tuesday night. I counted about 20-23 people. It was a lot of fun and I met some wonderful folks. I did forget my camera. Sorry no pictures. Thanks to artist (Kathy Jureck) for inviting me. I basically did the same painting as my practice one the other day. Only difference was I had about 1/2 hour to do it. Can you say "speed painting!"



I started another new schedule for myself. I desperately need to exercise and eat better. (more discipline wouldn't hurt)...So my new regimen is to do my Daily Practice Painting then exercise for an hour,(huh) then work on my studio pieces...... what are the chances I'll keep this up for more than a day? Maybe I should start a new blog... Daily Exercise and Eating Right Practice.



click on the image to enlarge the painting
An Apple A Day
original by Peter Yesis
8"x10"
oil on canvas board
(Click Here to Bid on EBay) To start the new discipline off on the right foot I painted my snack for the day. See, I've already started...I took a bite.

The docents at Rancho Camulos enjoy dressing up and playing the part of the residents long since gone. Beth was kind enough to water this lovely vine, holding the pose for several artists. I wasn't going to post this effort but my daughter encouraged me to blog the painting. She said "look at it in the dark, the painting glows". And so here it is, the "Watering Can".

Oil on panel, 12" X 9"

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