#BUT EHERE ARE THESE IDEAS SPROUTING FROM

[monards]

… why are we excessively vilifying one of the characters who are meant to clearly show the concept of humanity being flawed and concept, when it’s clear she’s mentally ill and you guys haven’t done this to literally any other character we’ve met whose been more reliably established as worse… :3

[prinzsorgenfrei]

„Ingersleben will Soldat werden; Katt incliniret eher zur Poeterey und Träumerey“ - Katte's teachers in Glaucha, 1719

Y'all know I'm a slut for portraits, especially ones with poetry and dreamery.

Enter my long-time project from the crappy art class I took! I learned a lot, but only because I taught myself :'D The teacher insisted that I was painting Jeanne d'Arc in front of a random French castle. I told him that I was not. He didn't get it. Anyway.

This is my most ambitious acrylic painting as of yet (and, with 50x70 centimeters one of the biggest) and while a lot of mistakes were made, I am overall happy with the outcome. Rambling about the painting process, vague intended symbolism and memery under the cut.

I started this thing back in early March. Originally, I wanted to show Katte as more of a traditional knight, representing parts of his family's coat of arms (a white cat with a mouse between its teeth on a light blue background). Then I noticed that, with a summery sky as a background, the painting would be SO blue and white it could be hanging in the Landtag of Bavaria. So the only parts of that idea that are left at this stage of the painting are the banner, the roses (the full version of the coat of arms includes red roses sprouting from the top of the helmet), and the ribbon around his arm as a knight's favour.

The ribbon is black and white as a nod to the coat of arms of the Hohenzollern. I was considering a few other colours (orange, for the sash of the Order of the Black Eagle; blue and white for the family; the colours of his mother's coat of arms; green, because Friedrich liked green; rainbow, because my mom said "It's Pride Month and he's gay, make it rainbow!"...) but the black and white seemed the most fitting. Although making it rainbow was tempting.

Another thing that connects Katte to Friedrich in this picture is the cipher on his cuirass that reads FR (instead of FWR, which would have been the correct cipher during Katte's time in the military). Funnily enough, I left out the mark of Katte's actual knighthood, the St John's cross, in favour of the mark of his loyalty to his Prince.

It's the other way around on the actual portrait that we have of Katte and people have been wondering if the lack of royal cipher on the cuirass may have something to do with the execution taking place before the painting was finished. I do believe that that's an interesting theory; after working on painting the damn thing myself I could also see the variation that there was just too damn much going on in this specific spot on the cuirass to paint it all :'D That's what happened to me, in any case.

The background is a rendition of the palace of Küstrin - just the palace, because ya girl wasn't gonna copy the whole city off of early 20th century postcards. Would have been more trouble than it was worth. I was originally considering showing the city wall of Tangermünde, which is the next bigger city from Katte's ancestral estate of Wust (and a wonderful place to spend a weekend!), but Küstrin felt more fitting. Overall, I feel like you can really see what I usually paint - people, usually no houses, and definitely no horses. But I like it. It's my boy. He has a cute nose and his cuirass is shiny.

As for memery: Er sieht halt einfach echt ein bisschen aus wie das Logo vom Rotbäckchen-Saft