Student Works During Quarantine

sonia leatarde girl with doll oil painting

Very proud of my students, these works were done independently of me. They took what they had been learning and applied it on their own, self-motivated, and, in my mind, very successfully. Sonia painted the two girls from masterworks from the Prado, but they are free transcriptions. We've been working with color theory and forming the structure of the face. Sonia's recent lessons with me was to freely copy some classic sculpture heads to learn form. The roundness in her children's faces is superb. And they look like children, one of the most difficult things to do in art.

Pushing the Composition Envelope, Melissa Hefferlin Still Lifes

It is interesting to contrast Hefferlin with Picasso (he is one of my favorite artists). He created some of the best compositions of all time, but he frequently distorted the subjects – like the woman's face, body, and other objects – to make very clever compositional arrangements. But in distorting reality so much he threw the baby out with the bathwater. He was visually saying that reality is a chaos of distorted perspectives that are not true to real life. What is exceptional about Melissa is her ability to tweak these pattern motifs while keeping a realistic perspective, a feat of integration that Picasso doesn't match up to.

Ellipses: Don’t Start a Still-life Without ‘Em

Ellipse demo Da Vinci

Newberry Art Tutorials Ellipses make or break any drawn plate, glass, or bottle. When beautifully done they transport the viewer to experience serene harmony. It's rare not to have a man-made cylindrical object in a still life. It should not be surprising that da Vinci painted/drew beautiful ellipses. This detail is a from The Last Supper–it is …