Continuing with portrait heads

Our homework assignment was to work from a portrait of Piero, Rembrandt or Beckman.  I chose the Rembrandt self-portrait that I'd looked at so deeply when I visited the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid.  Then I thought it came out too much like my same-ol' same ol' and decided to do a Beckman, since his style is so different from mine.  I chose Quappi in Pink Jumper, which is also in the Thyssen-Bornemisza.  I liked it when I saw it there, surprisingly, since I don't usually like much of Beckman's work.  Anyway... here are both of my efforts.

Portrait heads

This week we did portrait heads.  A student modeled, and his image was captured on the overhead projector's screen, and we worked one full session on him in three values: dark, medium and light.  I did not get a good mid-value, I can see after-the-fact.

Update for 6/11/12 Final Review:  This is the latest version, although effects of light sources need further consideration.

Rapid photo imagery

We started the "BDP"--that's "big developed painting"--and it's a biggun all right!  3' x 4'.  We started by choosing a famous-painting reproduction, and used big globs of paint, sponges and water to cover the whole surface with a sketchy rendition of that painting.  I chose Francois Boucher's Diana Bathing as my base imagery. Then, every 15 minutes or so, a different photographic image appeared on the big screen; we could use as much or little as we wanted out of that image.  I used the image of Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray playing chess, and a photo of Nadia Sibirskaia, and some calla lilies, and a couple of monks.  Oh, and an abstract painting of tree roots--that was another of the projected images.  We worked on this for a 2nd session... and will continue for one more, I am told.

Vermeer's values

A Vermeer painting was projected on the large classroom screen, and we were supposed to use only grey values to paint it.  I cheated a bit, and had to backtrack and reduce it down to B&W.  In the following session, we used "glazing" to work in some hints of color.

And from the collage, a painting

Next, we were to do a painting of our collage, not of the source painting, but referencing only the collage.

Week 2

The assignment was to make a collage from a well-known artist's painting, using only torn magazine bits.  Examples shown used some drawing as well, so I did too. (Source material was a Matisse painting.)

Oh--we also did a couple of still-life paintings from studio set-ups, but those were too boring for words! (or eyes)

Art as team sport!

I'm behind with posting... I started a painting class with Mark Andres at PCC/Rock Creek about five weeks ago.  Pictured, you see the first exercise of the first class.  In groups of three people, we worked--together simultaneously!--from a reproduction of a painting to create our own version on a giant sheet of paper tacked on the wall.  It was so fun, and intriguing how we figured out how to work together and respect each other's choices. I think we spent a bit of the next class session on this, too.
Note:  this was from a painting by the Mexican muralist Jose Clement Orozco.