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How the work is made
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Home › Notes from the studio › How the work is made
Everything on this site is oil on stretched canvas, painted over several weeks in my studio in Boekel in the south of the Netherlands. That is a slow and slightly unfashionable way to make images, and it is the whole reason the work looks the way it does. This is what happens between a photograph and a finished canvas.
New here? Start with these three.
- How long one painting takes
- When is a painting finished?
- Painting from a photograph: the objection, and the answer
The method
- How long one painting takes — months in the archive, then several weeks in blocks of days, and why there is no deadline anywhere in it.
- When is a painting finished? — a canvas stops when the painter is done with it, not when it is. What that distinction actually means.
Where it comes from
- Painting from a photograph: the objection, and the answer — the objection put at full strength, and five canvases that answer it.
- A short history of erotic art, from Pompeii to Instagram — every century has had a room to put this work in, and only the name on the door changes.
- The women in Painted Idols — who the women are, how a photograph becomes a painting, and how the source is credited.
The painter
- About Willem van der Krieken — twenty-five years of making images in 3D design, advertising and software, work he still does, and what that has to do with how these canvases look.
The material
- The original paintings — oil on stretched canvas, unframed and ready to hang, signed, with a certificate of authenticity.
- Signed prints — how a print differs from the canvas it came from.
What it means for a buyer
- Buying erotic art — choosing and cost.
- Frequently asked questions about buying, framing and shipping
Questions people ask
What are the paintings made of?
Acrylic underpainting, finished in oil on stretched canvas. They are sold unframed and ready to hang, signed, and come with a certificate of authenticity.
“Oil on linen” and “oil on canvas” are not two options to choose between. Canvas is the woven support, and linen and cotton are both kinds of it. Linen costs more, cotton is more common, and neither word tells you whether a painting was painted or printed — which is the thing actually worth checking.
These listings say canvas, and they say it on purpose. The supports are bought stretched and ready to paint, so which of the two weaves any given canvas carries is not something I can state per painting. Naming one anyway would be a detail invented to sound precise.
Who paints them?
I do, and only me — in a studio in Boekel in Noord-Brabant, the Netherlands. I have spent twenty-five years making images in 3D design, advertising and software, and I still do. The painting happens alongside that, which is why nothing here was made on a deadline.
How long does one painting take?
Several weeks per canvas. That is also why there are twenty-three of them rather than two hundred, and why there is no second version of any painting.
Can I commission a painting?
I take a few portrait commissions each year. There are no deadlines, I decide how it gets painted, and I may decline. If you want to ask, the route is the contact page.