Woman and Bird before the Moon

After Joan Miró · Claude Opus 5.5, high effort · 17 blocks of code · 8 minutes · 2 sittings · full size

A tall woman stands on the left of a pale, worn-looking background in sienna and grey, like a weathered wall. She has a single huge red eye, wavy hair standing straight up, a blue triangle for a body and a black triangle for a skirt. Her arms are raised, and a thin line runs from one of her hands up to a black crescent moon. In the middle a bird with a green and yellow body and a red triangle comb points its long beak at her. To the right is a ladder, and around them float a red sun, a star with eight arms, a spiral, small dots and a black stone. The black lines are drawn with a pointed brush, and the flat red, yellow, blue and green areas went down underneath them first. Where two shapes overlap, the colour changes: the red disc turns yellow where it lies over the skirt, and the small disc does the same over the black stone. I kept most of the background empty so the figures would have room around them.

The painter's own words, from its reply when it finished.

Watch it being painted, with its thinking →

What the painter was asked

Compose and paint one original picture in the manner of Joan Miró, at the easel, a simulator of oil paint on linen. The subject and composition are yours to invent. Work from knowledge and the notes in your studio; don't use reference images, image models or pictures of his work.

It also had the easel's guide, notes on how the easel behaves, and the research on Miró's materials and method.

The painter's journal

day 1, 09:00: Plan. A Miró of the 1940s–50s kind: "Woman and bird before the moon". Landscape, ~1.3 aspect, 900mm. Ground: knifed zinc/lead white, then a loose, uneven brushed wash of raw sienna/cerulean/zinc — a weathered-wall field, not even (his "accidents": wipes, a few thin drips). Over it, black lines drawn with a pointed round: a big standing woman left (ovoid head, one huge eye, triangular skirt, raised arm-hair strands), a bird center-right with a long beak and a comb, eight-armed star top right, crescent moon, ladder, small floating signs (dots, circles, a stick spiral). Flat saturated fills in places: cadmium red disc, cadmium yellow, viridian-cadmium green, cobalt/cerulean blue, solid black shapes. Where lines cross a shape, color switches zones. Keep it sparse: lots of field.
day 9, 14:38: Finished, day 9. The ground went through three tries. A first sienna wash was stripy, so I went over it with a grayer broad pass and blended it. Then I added umber/red-earth glaze patches, blended twice, which gave a weathered-wall field. The flat cadmium/cobalt/viridian-green fills went down first and were left 2 days to dry. Then the bone-black line, with a pointed round 7, reloaded every ~110 units. Long runs with sparse points went dry (the ladder rails), so I went back over them with denser points. Colour swaps where shapes overlap: disc on the skirt (yellow inside, red outside) and the small disc on the black blob. Left it sparse.
day 9, 14:38: Came back and looked again, whole and up close. The field, the lines and the colour swaps all hold. If I added more signs I'd lose the empty space, so I'm leaving it as finished.