Learning How to Paint from Old Master Pieter Bruegel
In this video I make a study of Bruegel’s 1562 painting Two Chained Monkeys.
Materials used:
Plywood panel, traditional gesso(marble powder, glue, water, double boiler), oil paint (lead white, hansa yellow, ivory black, burnt sienna, burnt umber, raw umber, cerulean blue, ultramarine blue), fast drying glaze medium, linseed oil, nylon brushes, natural brushes, transfer paper with printout
Wislawa Szymborska’s poem:
Two Monkeys by Brueghel
(trans. from the Polish by Magnus Kryski)
I keep dreaming of my graduation exam:
in a window sit two chained monkeys,
beyond the window floats the sky,
and the sea splashes.
I am taking an exam on the history of mankind:
I stammer and flounder.
One monkey, eyes fixed upon me, listens ironically,
the other seems to be dozing–
and when silence follows a question,
he prompts me
with a soft jingling of the chain.
