Saturday Night at Vermeer’s Studio

What started out as a sketch of Vermeer’s Girl with the Pearl Earring ended up as this cARToon! If you take your Vermeer very seriously (I am a big fan) then look away now! 

After sketching Miss Pearl Earring's head, I decided to add more figures to the page which I sketched from other Vermeer paintings. In the end I had a couple of figures but I like my sketchbook pages to be connected by a theme and so I found the page boring, to pep things up I decided to make this into a story! 

Here's the rundown! It's Saturday night and Jan Vermeer is painting in his studio, he's a bit of a poser (Jan is from the painting “the Artist in his Studio!”) and loves demonstrating his skills to his adoring audience of model groupies and his best friend who is a bit sozzled in the left corner! Jan is posing a bit with those bright red/orange stockings which at that time were the latest and cost a fortune.  

Jan is painting “the Girl with the Pearl Earring”,  the other earring is in the palm of her hand and is massive! “The Woman with the Pearl Necklace” is peeved that her necklace is teeny in comparison and “the Woman with the Balance” has got everything sussed, she always weighs her gifts from Jan (in the painting she is wearing fur trim and has a big pile of pearls on the table in front of her!). Jan is a bit fed up with the cat fighting and points out that not only did Missy (my name for the Woman With the Pearl Necklace) get the necklace but other gifts too! 

Hmmm up to this point Miss Earrings was quite content but now realises she’s been short changed! Jan's sozzled mate is jealous and full of admiration for Jan and his cool tights. He wishes he could paint, be surrounded by a bevy of adoring Baroque beauties and wear the coolest trends. “The Girl with the Wine Glass”, true to form ........ is only in it for the booze! 

Now whoever said that copying from the Masters was boring! 

What’s the postage stamp doing there, I hear you ask? Well, it was the inspiration for this studio drama and I liked the fact that it looked like (and indeed is) a painting of the couple in front of it.