Egyptian religion – A DEAD LETTER

Painting – ideas on how to involve Egyptians religion and time.

14 November 202022 October 2021Dead Roses

Painting

For this I want to start working with a sketching how I can use and manipulate the background to add more ideas with time and Egyptian religion. I am going to sketch out some ideas and then try to start adding them on. but i also might just experiment with random ideas that I don’t want to use encase they work better.

Things i want to work from:

I want to take inspiration from these because:

I really like the positioning of this one. due to the fact you can not see the middle of the flower making it look more natural instead of being angle and placed.
I liked the idea you can see the middle so it would help to paint/ draw the middle of the flower if i wanted to. it does also look natural as well.
I chose this one as I love how you can see the colours of the petals but it also shows how fragile they are due to how they give the look of nearly being transparent.
This is a beautiful painting from Egyptians of their blue water lotus, I want to try and include this into the painting as this is where it has come from and I think it would be very respectful to add in some type of their style of painting.

Me Doing My Sketches:

These are some photos of me while making the sketch page from the inspiration photos I found online. I used as many different mediums as i have assess to right now (expect paint, as I don’t have any paper that can handle paint)

At first I thought I wasn’t that keen on the style the Egyptian art but now after using different style I do quite like it. Both of the flower style caught my eye. this means I want to experiment with both and see if I can involve both.

The Final Look Of The Sketch page……

This is the final look of the sketch page. this page helped a lot, just to see how each different material would look when using it for the same thing. i do like the black and white drawings but I do feel like it defeats the point in having the blue and yellow symbolism. so I feel its best to stick with a colour approach and also I feel the coloured pencils worked best even though I still really do like the felt pens

the next thing i can do is try and add them to my works within the studio as i want to use the background to influence the position of the flowers and i cant do that by practice. so for now I am going to do what I have done here with some of my other ideas.

links to the photos:

https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/topic/57064-blue-lotus/

http://www.barebeautyessentials.com.au/beauty-news/sacred-blue-lotus-skin-care-of-the-ancients/

Painting – Egyptian Beliefs beginning of afterlife

11 November 202022 October 2021Dead Roses

Painting

A big part of my art is finding ways to express what I want to, but I also love looking into peoples cultures and finding out about their arts and beliefs as I find this really interesting. One that I have really loved is looking into is the Egyptian beliefs and the stories of their gods.

I have looked in to this a lot in the past and i find their belief of the after life interesting as a lot of people believe there is nothing. I am not sure what I believe, so I do like to get very involved in others thoughts as they do help me to be more open minded.

This means my art could take two different views, as I could do a persons life through time leading to nothing and then I could do a life leading to the after life.

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The Afterlife…..

For me to fully understand the after life I feel I need to look into the reason or beginning of the belief. For this I’m going to look deeper into the first tomb we found that shows us about what they did for the afterlife

Kha and Merit…..

Kha and merit were a husband (kha) and his wife (merit) who lives within a small village that was located between the desert and the river Nile in Egypt about 35,000 years ago. Their tomb was discovered and explored within 1906, They then moved everything within the tomb to a museum in Italy.

Within the tomb was all of their belongings from food to perfumes and more, this did also include their mummified bodies. This is the easiest form of preparing for the afterlife we have found (I think).

The belief of the afterlife was so strong that most of their life the people of this belief would make sure their hearts are not full of sin, as this would be detrimental for them in the journey through the under world.

What Happens within And Before The Afterlife…..

Egyptians loved life and they believed in life after death. For this they would have to lead good lives with no sin. They believed that the afterlife was like crossing the Nile and that living after death would be life their normal life, but only perfect. This is where they would become immortal.

To be prepared for the afterlife they would be mummified and put into a tomb. This tomb would be filled with all their belongings, for them to use within the afterlife. This could be from chairs to perfume to food and wine and a lot more.

Within the funeral all their belongings will be put into the tomb but there will also be a retiral called the “opening of the mouth” this is where a family member will use a tool to touch against the dead’s mouth. This tool is called a adze. (it was a special chisel)

Other parts of the retiral would include:

A band playing music – to open the persons hearing.
Dances – to open up the persons sight.
Perfume and scents – presented to the persons noise to open their smell.
The best food/wine – to open the persons soul.

This would then prepare them for the afterlife.

Their view on dead is a temporary thing before immortality. To be able to get to the afterlife and live within the perfect immortality, they would have to take a dangerous journey through the underworld. This would involved many different tasks that the god make but the most important one is the last test “the weighting of the heart”. This is where the god Osiris tests their heart for sin.

A heavy heart is a sign of sin and that their where bad within their life, a light heart means they lead a good life. If you are found to have a heavy heart this would lead for your heart to be through to a beast.

To help a person through this journey there was a book that was made called “book of the dead” this book was full of magical spells to help someone make it to the afterlife. this book was made on papyrus

References for information…..

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/magazine/2016/01-02/egypt-book-of-the-dead/

http://www.deirelmedina.com/lenka/TurinKha.html

http://www.profmcginty.co.uk/egyptadze.htm

Toilet box of flasks and jars of Merit, holding fragrances and cosmetics, from the tomb of Kha (TT8), ca. 1386-1349 BC from ArtefactPorn

Painting – How I Think I Could Use Egyptians Beliefs.

26 October 202022 October 2021Dead Roses

Painting

One idea I have had for this piece is the ides of Immortality. For this i have had more of the idea of generations and how someone can live on through others, rather than one single person.

This can be like how my grandma had my mum, this means that a part of her will always be within my mum weather than genetically but also habits and little things to do with my grandmas personality. Then my mum had me so not only will i have some of my mum in me but I will also have some things from my grandma, this is then how my grandma lice both though her self but also through the lower generations of the family.

so for this I am going to do a painting looking into families and also generations but also add in a Egyptian aspect to it.

cant find a link to this photo. it is off the internet.

One thing I have noticed about the way that Egyptians paint is in a story board way this then gives the look of a story I really like this idea as I could use it to show the development of the family and show that person can live on.

This could be a good way to present my work as this does have a good look of passing through time. So from this I am going to be looking in to using this positing to present my work. but I don’t think I am going to use their painting style. For the style I am going to look into abstract painters as this will develop my work with the massive black and white paintings.

Symbolisms within nature to represent Egyptian belief…..

One thing I know about the religion is there beliefs around the Nymphaea Caerulea ( the blue water lily) this lily has a very big meaning and also is link into a story behind one of their gods. the flower has a very big link to both creation and the idea of re-birth. the story of the flower is:

At the very beginning there was murky dirty water and nothing else. within this water a lotus flower grew about the water to then bloom. As the flower bloom the beautiful colours of the blue turning in to the golden yellow was said to release the God Ra (the sun god). Ra also created two Gods that swam away into the waters and this upset Ra, after a while the two gods Shu and Tefnut (Tefnut is the god of rain and moisture while Shu (Tefnut’s sister) is the god of air) came back and this feel Ra with joy. This made Ra cry and these tears became humans.

So the lotus flower looked like the sun coming out when it blooms so the lotus flower created the sun gods bringing life and light to the world through Ra.

Story of Ra…..

Ra is the god of sun within their beliefs, time has worn him down from being the greatest god at one point. As the sun god he would have to cash away the darkness and bring light. the god is a man with a falcons head. on top of his head is the sun disk. to make this better he would cross the skies and take away the darkness on his sun boat. in turn this would then light up the whole world. As everyday would pass their would always be nightfall and this is where Ra would sail into the waters and have to pass through the 12 gates of the underworld. The nights are made up of 12 hours so it was believed it would take Ra an hour to get through each of the 12 gates.

There was not only gates but their was mainly two other things he would always do one of which was seeing Osiris (the god of the underworld(he would decided if your heart was full of sin or not). Ra would visits Osiris and pay him respects. Another thing the god Ra had to do was fight Apophis (a snake god who is the god of evil and darkness). every night when Ra would make this journey Apophis would become a little closer to destroying Ra’s sun boat. One night the god manged to swallow the sun boat causing a solar eclipse. This is due to the snake not being able to hold the sun boat within her stomach so Ra got free.

There was another god called Set (God of destruction). Set was condemned to travel with Ra on the sun boat to help him defeat Apophis and travel through the underworld. The reason he has to do this is because he was lost the extreme thrown to Horus.

so I could use this within my work to show how parts of someone can be re-born within a younger generations and also how over times things can get better.(e.g how the world was just dirty dark water but over time something small grew and then changed the world for the best).

Reference Links…..

The Boat of Ra

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Egyptian-Sacred-Blue-Water-lily-Nymphaea-Caerulea-10-seeds-Not-lotus-CombSH-A58-/111686704794

Painting Project – My Ideas.

21 October 202022 October 2021Dead Roses

Painting

From the mind map on my last post I have come up with a few idea that I could use. As by the end of this I have to create a series of paintings, I really want to do a painting on each subject within time. This could be words and ideas for example;

Physical Decay
Mental health Decay
Time
Change
Old and New

With this I could use each word to be a painting. So each painting could be looking into another aspect of time. This would make it easier to have a bigger over look of the subject time, without making one painting with way to much happening.

My First Idea…..

This idea is what I have just touched on. For this idea I would chose about 3-4 different words (possibly questions) to do a painting about. This would lead to having a series of paintings that are all different but they would all relate to the same subject, This would hopefully make an interesting visual galleries when they are all together.

To do this I would need to do a lot of research into different subject, but at the same time keep it light so that I don’t give myself to much work and then run out of time. One thing i have looked into before and want to bring into this project is Egyptian religion. Due to their belief within the afterlife. I want to use this because a lot of people believe we only have the time we physically do on this earth, but Egyptians believe that we have an afterlife. This would be a good subject to have on all of my paintings to have a visual link to all the paintings.

This is one of my favourite ideas and something I really want to look into more. I feel this idea will be the best to present the subject of time and be the more visually pleasing when put up.

Photo Links…..

https://www.canstockphoto.com/time-travel-clock-sphere-future-science-18237701.html

https://hubpages.com/education/Egyptian-Mythology-Afterlife

————————————-Another idea—————————————–

Another idea I have had is looking in to painting over time. This would involve looking into what is paint?, or what is a painting?. This idea I would have to so a lot of research for because it would involve looking so far back into time. One time that I really do want to look into for this idea is cave paintings.

I want to look into this because I think it is really interesting how we have developed painting over years even before we knew what it is (e.g cave paintings) I want to look into how paintings have changed materials wise and developed from cave painting to communicate to making religious art to show what we believe in.

I really like this idea as I feel there is a lot to look into and its looking in to what I’m doing not just painting. I feel this could be really interesting but its not my favourite idea, so I don’t know if this is one i would carry on with.

Photo Links…..

http://redhaattiya.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-animators-survival-kit-chapter-1.html

https://timesofmalta.com/articles/view/Focus-on-medieval-art.671727