Service Description

DICE We’ll start this series with the dice. Take a chance on oils on copper and who knows where it will lead… The game of dice has made and ruined fortunes and lost whole kingdoms in the great Indian epic Mahabharata; it is also an innocuous children’s toy used in board games or as an ancient game of chance and luck in itself. You can start off organising your cabinet by looking at the world chronologically and historically starting with the creation of the universe or you can build up your world picture hierarchically as they did in Medieval times starting with God, angels and humans. Or you can look at it slightly askew and from the oblique point of view of magic, chance and fate, knowing that the world is being created anew at every minute, and multiple forked paths are available at any one time. This is the game of choices and chances, fate and free will. It is the game of life itself. Games of chance and dice were also originally a form of divination and meditation aid as well as play toys. This magical way of looking at the world allows for multiple associations and readings across categories; games allow for endless variations and indeed information, even secret codes, can be embedded ‘in between the lines’. I have chosen every singular object or picture carefully as each will help transmit a certain aspect of the principles of oil painting and picture making. These images are starting points only; we will entirely create our own artworks. NEXT The Ivory Tower AFTER THAT Glass beads UPCOMING Coming up are bubbles, origami, mushrooms, bonsai, animals, little houses, peas in a pod, cave paintings, teapots, deserts, stars, stairs, galaxies and nebulas, hot springs, the moon, the sun, islands, mome raths, extinct Pre-Cambrian and Mesozoic landscapes, birds, doors, forest floors, enchanted seas, a materials library subsection including wood, glass, rocks, bubbles, bread… MATERIALS LIST For full materials list, see here: https://www.miniaturepaintingforum.com/forum/resources/oil-on-copper-materials-list New students will be emailed a preparatory list in advance.