For Alyosha

The Karamazovs

I painted this just now. Decided to have fun with the remaining of my half-dried out water colour and abundance of painting paper. It irks me that 1/2 and inch of the bottom and right side of the painting is cropped off since it won't fit the scanner. Which sucks because I focussed the most on beautifying the stallion's mane! I tried to scan it twice and merge the pictures to no avail. Without photoshop such simple tricks are difficult. *sigh* Nevermind.

For those who read the book:

As you can see, I depicted the 4 brothers as animals because, I suck at drawing people *shrugs* Alyosha's (Alexey) the biege-pink stallion, Ivan the raven, Dmitri the fox and Smerdyakov the snake. The dead tree on the crimson rock is non other than Fyodor. As for the thorned rose out of reach, well, it is everything that their wanton hearts desires for. The dove, I feel, is Katerina. The subdued moon in the background the writer.

I haven't actually finished reading the book but not to matter. This painting is based on my first impression of the book. I made it a point to draw Alyosha the largest, the furthest from the tree and looking out of the picture because well, there's not much he can do actually to save his family from themselves. Honest and sincere Alyosha strikes me the most because he is loving and genuine. I love him (haha). He makes you believe that there really ARE good people out there.

Cunning Ivan is going for Katerina, we see only his back because I don't know what to make of him actually since I've only read til the part where he left Katerina to Moscow (though it is assured that he won't actually leave for Moscow). All I know is that he's cunning, silent, ironic and above all, shrouded in his own 'lacerations'.

Dmitri. Oh how do I describe him? In my opinon (so far) out of the 4 siblings he is the MOST similar to the despicable Fyodor. Except of course he isn't quite so much of a 'buffoon' as Fyodor. To him I suppose, the thorned rose is the 'creature' (Grunshenka).

Last and definitely the least, is Smerdyakov. So far (that I've read), little has been told of 'The Stinker' but enough to make me dislike him. I don't blame him for turning out to be that way though.

As for Katerina? I think absolutely nothing of her.

So yeah, I haven't painted since form 5 for SPM so I'm rusty. Not that I've ever been that gifted anyway. I'm adequately skilled to draw things that I wish and have them turn out to be 20% similar to how I imagine in my head. *smiles*

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P.S: Dayana reminds me of Alyosha because she is genuine and good and beautiful (just like him) and because she wrote this in her blog "I kinda dislike being in love. I mean towards the opposite sex...(my love for my family is infinity and will never end)".