Reimagined Classics: The Birth of Thomasina

And here we are, at last, at the end of Thomasina’s romp through famous paintings old and older.

This painting was horrific. It really was. Many a nightmare was had after looking at even the smallest part of it. It had to be pixelated. It had to be blurred out. It had to be tweaked to being almost unrecognisable, it was that bad.

The painting upon which this horror masterpiece is based is none other than Sandro Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, originally painted in the 1480s. In the original painting, there are a few characters, and a large shell, from which Venus is apparently emerging. As Thomasina’s version had to be created on a closed set, there were no extras. There were also no large shells available, so Thomasina improvised with a few baskets.

In the original, as the depiction is meant to be of Venus newly born, she has been painted without clothes. She was painted covering most of her, er, body parts, and this was how Thomasina demanded she be painted in this modern version.

The painting was created. Did I mention just how horrific it was? Multiply it by ten. A thousand.

This whole series was almost cancelled because of it. There was no way an image as grotesque as that could possibly appear on a blog with the calibre of this one, so in the end, Thomasina backed down and decided to put on a few clothes. Well, a tatty old bathing costume to give the image an aged look. It didn’t really add anything to the picture, but then again it added the most important part. And a huge sigh of relief.

Some would say the series should have been cancelled anyway, and in some regards, I would have to agree… but only to a point. The paintings, even this one, have been fun to create digitally. They aren’t meant to ridicule the original pieces of art upon which they are based, but instead meant to show that anything can be a source of inspiration. Some ideas are worth going with, just because. If they work, they work. If they don’t, they don’t. It’s all part of the creative process, part of the creative journey, and a little detour along the way is very good for the soul.

If you do have nightmares because of this image, then I can only apologise… although it isn’t like I haven’t mentioned it for the past few weeks. Still, it’s over now, and next week we shall see other things.

Just what, right at the moment, is to be determined.