Spinges in front of gate Painting

This is an older picture from 2008 in my "surrealistic phase". However, there is a funny story to this painting: I was out in the Belvedere garden in Vienna with a friend of mine. We both intended, in order to hone our drawing skills, to draw the stone sphinges, being several of them in the garden, from a tricky angle. And as we were sketching away, a lady and two men came to the spot where we painting. One of the men started to talk to us, in a rather patronizing way, and advised we should draw somethng else, because the shape and perspective of these monuments is very difficult. To give his words more gravitas, he mentioned that he used to be an art teacher and knows how tricky those sphinges are to draw. We, unimpressed by this slight, did not act upon the man's advice, and cooly worked on, assuring him we are perfectly capable of drawing them. Then, he spoke to his friends in English, telling them that he just tried to dissuade us from taking on such a difficult subject matter which will frustrate us due to the poor results we would be able to achieve. But we remained unperturbed. Finally, in a sort of grandiose promise, again rather condescendingly, he exclaimed he would return to this spot and see what we accomplished. After a couple of hours, we had drawn our sphinges, got the perpective right and everything, and the man indeed kept his promise. He came up to us, circled around us, silently, a couple of times, and then withdrew. Obviously, he was dissappointed, for we were indeed able to draw them, even if it was a tough angle. His dissatisfaction, not with our work, but with his own hurt self-importance, was palpable. Once he was gone, we had a good laugh. 99 times out of a 100 nobody will say anything unpleasent when you paint plein-air, they might look curiously over your shoulder, sometimes praise your work, but normally people are even too shy to come close to you, as you paint, let alone say something. This was the only time where somebody said somehing which a beginner would find negative. We were confident enough, and had a good laugh afterwards. The measurements given are related to passe-partout size, the actual paper is slightly bigger.

Painting:Watercolor on Paper

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:20.1 W x 13 H x 0 D in

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