Start with Art Archives - Page 40 of 43

Start With Art: Are you More Renoir or Laurencin?

November 10, 2014 Two of my favorite artists, and two subtly different approaches to the feeling of romance and femininity. Renoir is very traditionally (late 19th century) soft, ruffly, dainty floraly kind of feminine. Laurencin, very much like Chanel who is the subject of this painting, gives us a little bit sleeker vision of womanly grace and beauty.

How do these subtle differences translate into your personal style - your choices of accessories and garments? Both are beautiful and appealing, but there are substantial differences, if we study the paintings long enough. These were some of my thoughts:

For jewelry, Renoir art gives me the feeling of delicate, carefully jeweled pieces with a lot of ... View the Post

Start With Art: A Shelf of Books -> a Summer Wardrobe

November 7, 2014 You really, seriously, can get inspiration anywhere, if you keep your eyes and your aesthetic heart open to what's out there. This absolutely wonderful picture was sent to me - what a delightful mix of softly faded colors.

It wasn't at all hard to come up with a color scheme. Many of you ask about how I build color wheels - I use the graphing gizmo in PowerPoint. I use PowerPoint for all of my vignettes, because it does everything I need. Just insert a graph into a slide, and then change the colors and sizes of the various wedges to suit your preferences. You have a new, beautiful mnemonic for your wardrobe colors, AND you have a new skill to put on your ... View the Post

Start With Art: Call of the Loon by Ewoud de Groot

November 6, 2014

There's a lot of beauty here, and colors galore...

I settled on these, using ink blue as my base neutral. Realistically, you could choose anything soft and muted in the green/blue/purple family and be extremely successful.

This is for someone subdued, a little bit dressy, going away for a couple of days to a warmer destination. Maybe not the beach, but someplace where lighter fabrics will be comfortable. The dotted texture of the water is echoed in the first scarf, and the floral earring and pewter loafers are feminine but not girlish.

A linen dress, a silk skirt and a couple of tops, along with some pretty accessories are all you ... View the Post

Start With Art: Flowers from Rosablue – a Four Pack for Business

Turns out that this beautiful thing is from Rosablue, who prints her own fabrics...

Beyond the very obvious black background, there are quite a few colors in here that could come to the fore in a color scheme. How about black, white, and the orange and green? Or black, pale green, pale blue, and soft pink? But for today, I've chosen these colors:

As a woman in search of a red duffle coat, I'm drawn to all red coats right now, so that seemed a reasonable place to start. In my mind, the person in this vignette is heading out of town for a day of two of business meetings in which the people being visited have to do the impressing - her job is just to sit quietly and evaluate ... View the Post

Start With Nature: Ornamental Cabbage – a Four Pack

Why do I feel confident suggesting that this may be the only fashion ensemble in history that was explicitly inspired by a cabbage? But I don't feel very apologetic about this - these cabbages look more like big, gorgeous flowers, with subtle colors. Frankly, if you find colors that you like, they can come from ANYWHERE, and you never have to tell your secrets!

It would certainly be possible to go with more pink, and a couple of different shades, but I was in a green mood... There could also be some white in this combination, and you could use black in place of the dark grey. I can't stress enough that you should see what YOU want to see in these colors, and adjust your choices accordingly. The only ... View the Post

We are SO ahead of our time!

When we were in Amsterdam last month, we of course went to the Rijksmuseum. They have lots of Rembrandt's, some Vermeers - it's worth the effort, trust me. It's a museum that will linger in our memories for the rest of our lives.

But there was one thing there that really caught my eye - our TICKETS!

Both of the paintings are in fact details from The Night Watch by Rembrandt - arguably the crown jewel of the Rijksmuseum collection. But note the color schemes on the left side, drawn from the paintings! Remind anybody of our Start With Art? These two bit posters were outside the entrance to the museum. The first is colors taken from The Milkmaid by ... View the Post

Start With Art: Yellow Tree by Linda Jacobson

Seotember 16, 2014 So beautiful, and such inspiring colors! I was completely unfamiliar with this artist; my readers send me the most wonderful things...

I chose a muted palette from this painting - I think I'm in a muted mood today. Would you like to see a 2nd post (after my vacation!) based on this painting, with more vivid colors?

I've been asked to clarify the role of the various "fours" in the 4 by 4 Wardrobe, so I'm going to do that while working with this painting. Multitasking... The First Core of Four is designed to give you two tops and two "bottoms" (I don't know why, but lots of people are completely bothered by the term bottoms...) that can be ... View the Post

Start With Art: The Church at Coggeshall, Essex by John Armstrong

September 11, 2014

What a cool painting! It shows the World War 2 damage to the church, and the "reveal" of the interior structure of the church is fascinating. So sad that such a lovely piece of art is the result of destruction...From this, I selected two relatively minor colors in the painting as the neutrals, and then used the gorgeous pastels as the accent colors. The black is clearly visible, but I grabbed the sage green from the shrubbery that's relatively obscured on the left side of the painting. I think what I'm trying to show here is that, although the painting itself is very bright and muted pastel, it's still possible to pull together a wardrobe from these colors without enriching your dry ... View the Post

Start With Art: The Magpie by Claude Monet

September 4, 2014 In our mythical leisure, Belovedest and I watch art courses from The Great Courses. Our current course is The World's Greatest Paintings, in which we studied at some length the beauties of this:

Talk about mixing warm and cool colors to great effect! I was irresistibly drawn to use this as a Start With Art subject. Note one really interesting innovation that I'm trying: rather than attempt to nail down two specific browns and greys, or one color to represent the damp and frozen branches, slats on the gate, and branches in the fence, I'm working with a spectrum of brown to darkest grey. Doing this frees you up to build a wardrobe around any color that might be found in the ... View the Post

Start with Art: Lucy Hessel at the Seashore by Edouard Vuillard

June 4, 2014 My readers have the very best taste; this painting was sent to me to consider for a "Start With Art", and I thought the colors were so beautiful!The mood of this painting - languid, soft, dreamy, relaxed - made me think of a honeymoon, or a second honeymoon...

These were my color choices:

If you wanted to pack for a second honeymoon, you could certainly do worse than this!

As always, a well-chosen handful of outfits selected with a unifying theme will give you lots of options.

love, Janice ... View the Post

Start With Art: Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte – Version 2

May 22, 2014 A second look at this great painting - focusing on the left half of it, and picking up the lovely periwinkle/chambray blue details...

It is interesting that such a drizzly and cold painting lends itself so beautifully to hot-weather clothes.

I love this dress...

A couple more garments, some accessories, and shoes:

Soft and pretty - a great travel capsule wardrobe!

love, Janice

Looking back: 2012 - What to wear with a necklace: dragon pearls 2013 - We look at a whole bunch of ways to wear One Dress: Six Ways in Black, White and Pink ... View the Post

Start With Art: Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte

May 21, 2014

This wonderful work is back in the Art Institute of Chicago; it was being restored and was not available to view for a while. It's such an amazing work - the asymmetry, the subtle powdery colors, the juxtaposed angles...

Even though this is a chilly winter scene, I'm going to look at some warm-weather clothes... I love this coral color, so that's going to be the primary accent color in this wardrobe.

And the taupish grey that suffuses this painting is a perfect base for some simple summery tops.

A few more lovely coral items...

These should get you through at least a long weekend in style!

I ... View the Post