Skulls for Still Life

    Creepy it is, but skull is one of the subject for still life. It is called "vanitas" meaning "emptiness", and explains the meaningless lives of people spent on earth.     

      The work of the famous French-Baroque painter Philippe de Champaigne is one of many still lifes that has a skull. He emphasizes it by putting it between  two other things , a lily and hourglass.
 
          The painting reminds us that all things have its ends, the lily simply symbolizes  resurrection or after life. The hourglass depicts the time we spent with our lives or the journey to our death, good or bad.     The three subjects are related to one another when you put them together, it's just the painting is telling us that we have to make our lives useful because time is limited, we can no longer experience how to be contented and happy.

      De Champaigne used oil on panel as a medium for the painting.

     There also have been a painting of skulls and no other things combined to it, like the work of another French painter, Paul Cézanne, he only used skulls as  subject and add some drama on it like he stacked the four skulls and make it look more gloomy, reminding again our death.

Cézanne used oil on canvas for the artwork.

    

Inspiring Work of art

       My eyes caught the  garden of our front yard. It is a kind of palm garden because of the palm that was planted by my grand aunt years ago. The palm was surrounded by peanut plants crawling, and there are young palm growing besides it. At the back is a cozy cottage built to add a farm-like feature. There are bottles of beer planted ,surrounding the peanut plant in a triangle shape. The palm in the upper left side is the oldest because it is the tallest among them.

      This is actually my first sketch and I used pencil, a little rub of graphite from my finger to darken the shadowy areas for this artwork.

     It inspired me to draw it because of the leaves, they grow one to two times a year, and even many typhoons hit our front yard still they stand like nothing happened, it's like the plants are telling me to sketch them because they look so strong even they grow only an inch every year.

     One of the plant has been sold to make palm oil.