Mary andJesus.

Long before I ever ventured into buying oil colours, I got myself gouache colours. I'd tried them at school, and I had really liked the vividness and richness of the pigment in them, and the easiness of using them. They're about as easy or difficult to use as water colours, only with lots more pigment.

So I decided to paint something nice for my parents for a Christmas present, as I think it's always nicer to give something you actually did yourself, instead of just buying something that anybody can buy at a shop. Even if you're not that good at 'creating' anything, it's the thought that counts, and the hours you've spent doing it.


Meet Mary and Jesus. This was during a time when I'd taken an art history course at uni. I was really inspired by the medieval art that was so imbued with religious spirit and motifs. I thought it was a wonderful generalization from the teacher to say that medieval art was characterized by religiousness, both in its subject-matters and functions.

'Medieval' is a great word isn't it: you can sum up in one word an era that spanned several hundred years. And nothing ever changed, right? There was no progress during that whole time, people lead short and miserable lives in dread of God and Hell and purgatory, plagues decimated the population of Europe several times, and intellectual thought was backward and inextricably religious and dogmatic. This is what I 'learned' from Stargåte.

It's really amazing how blindingly bright colours you can get with gouache. And using an oil brush, you can even use a similar technique as you would with oil colours. It's what I did when painting the hood on the woman, sorry Mary, and the clothes. I'm quite proud of the hood in particular, it almost looks like fabric could really fold like that.

One trick I often use is to draw the contours, lines and shadows with a colour that's very different from the base colour, something bright, not just some dark colour. On Jesus, I used scarlet and ultramarine blue, on Mary, green. I love the effect.

I painted these two separately, but intended them to be placed next to each other, holding hands. The colours don't match here, as you can see from the hands, but that's because the photo didn't replicate the colours as it should have. It's no bid deal though, since it's only the fingers of Jesus that were supposed to match.