Thank you, Claudio.

here is on white and with black background.

Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment


About my interpretation of Vermeer's portrait. The girl in his painting is definitely looking at the painter/viewer and her attitude is that of a pose. She is posing for the master. In this respect I can say that the painter used realism without adding his emotional contribution to the portrait.
In my drawing the girl is looking towards the viewer but not necessarily at him/her. The expresion on her face is that of being intrigued by a sight in the direction of the viewer.My rendering is more engaging emotionally.

Very pleased with the final result which has far more dramatic tension than the original painting.
here it is 4 hours, Roseart colored pencils on Stonehenge pad 5x7in.

[quote name='ElenaM' post='64213' date='Apr 23 2009, 03:02 AM']Very pleased with the final result which has far more dramatic tension than the original painting.
here it is 4 hours, Roseart colored pencils on Stonehenge pad 5x7in.
/quote]

Yes, intensely dramatic, your interpretation of Vermeer portrait. You made big progress in the DS. Because you work hard.
I believe if we freely copy the Masters adding our own way to paint, considering the original as a professor base, we learn much more than when trying to obtain exactly the same result as the Masters, than we can't never achieve. Copying to make a faithful photo is too much technical to me.

Thanks, An.
Maybe there is not one way to learn, maybe there is a difference between skill (that is achieved) and talent (that is innate).
To me an identical copy seems something boring to accomplish but others might find challenges in it and the drive to aquire that likeness of duplicate.Each of these ways means a lot of work, and the wrong impression is that talented people do not put much effort and it comes naturally to them. It is not that way, in my opinion.
Talent is just the 1 % ingredient when it happens and the artists who have it work very hard.
Encouraging free expression is usually done when you assimilated the basics. But that is not a rule either. Each artist needs a method of learning art making suitable tfor him/her.There is no magic bullet for learning or teaching art.
Some can feel very intimidated by total freedom, improvisation, decision making in approaching a subject.I can understand that.
I do not have patience and i admire inmensily those who can spend 40 hours on a cat portrait. It takes courage and determination and the result is always admirable.

So we are all individualities when it comes to art and that uniqueness makes our works so different.

Beautiful interpretation, Elena. You changed slightly the angle of the head, the eyebrows, and added some tension in the mouth, for a much more dramatic expression. The woman in your painting is communicating different feelings than the one in the original. Bravo!

Thanks, Claudio. I think that my girl is saying: why should I be less famous than the Dutch girl?

For those interested in light and camera obscura in the work of Dutch painter Vermeer, here is a site that has more information.

Elena, Thank for the site, very interesting. The english painter David Hockney has written a book on the possible use of camera by the classical masters. I unfortunately do not remember the name of the book.
Elena, Claudio : Copying is very instructive. We learn a lot. But I have the feeling that this topic (drawing after the masters) does not interest the general audience of this DS. Should we contrinue?

A possible answer might be, yes.See the series : Drawing on the masters.

OK, thank, here is a copy of whom you all know! To learn the frank, sincere and bold way to draw

Bravo, An. You captured him wonderfully.

An, I am sorry that I am not drawing a lot lately, but I have a lot of work at the university. However, the answer to your question is, absolutement, yes.
Not only copying the masters helps you develop a lot of abilities (observation , skechting, proportions, style, etc), but drawing like the masters also helps getting out of the comfort zone (and improve skills).
Additionally, the research helps expand your appreciation and understanding. I have been searching lately on Picasso and I discovered a lot of pencil and charcoal drawings that I liked a lot (even most of his cubist works, I don't).
So, let's continue. I don't care if we are always the same three musqueteers

Claudio, you're right.Also I need to tell you how I look at Picasso's cubism.It's very clear to me that Picasso or any artist who wants to bring a fresh look in arts needs to show us another angle of our old world. What he did was to offer you the geometric approach to form/shape so you can take it from there and imagine it or recreate it in your mind as the true shape of an object.
The (h)arlequin in the drawing I copied is suggested in this style rather than rendered from reality.So here is something new that engages the intellect rather than our sense of beauty.
When you see the work you say: Yes, interesting concept. Because what he does in fact is operating with concepts. More I should say is returning to the basics of drawing; probably that harlequin is very similar to what a child would do in his early years of drawing from imagination or life. Simplifying shapes, the head, the body.
You don't have to love this art, it's your right to say it's not in your taste, aesthetic taste. But here the cubists brought us a pure form that can engage imagination, and offer a new dimension to art.
This is how I see cubism.I don't have to buy cubist art, reproductions, etc. for my living room but I can understand the value of their contribution, I can reflect and search for clues by seeing this art.I also think it is interesting to read about it, what the critics have to say and what I think or feel in front of it.
One of my favorites museums in Paris is not Louvre but Picasso Museum. Its a gem of intriguing and fascinating art.

The topic is to learn by inspiring from the master, not only Picasso. I think that cubism tentatives have been abandoned, but new doors beyond cubism have been opened since that time.
We are waiting for Sveta17, who 'll be back, I'm sure!

Elena, thank you for your words. In the case of Picasso (and some others) he was already a genius at age 14, and was capable of drawing a perfect academic study; at 17, he did pastels that many critics compare to Degas'; so, obviously, if he had reached that level that young, he still had a whole artistic life to go beyond that; he was able to express all his genious by doing breakthrough things. So, even if I don't like some of his work, I recognize his talent and genius of doing what he did, at the historical time that he did it (early 20th century).
Now my problem is with some contemporary artist, critics and curators, who hang pieces of cr.. in many galleries. Picasso has gone all the way through, and when he was back at square one, he was able to draw like a child searching for new horizons. For me, some people say "Well, he painted like a child, so I can do that too" and their works is ... well childish. However, many critics and curators get toghether to expose that art saying "Wow, what a creative genius" and you stand at a gallery in front of a white toilet seat, or an open wallet with spread credit cards, or a bucket, or a white canvas painted flat yellow (all real examples that I saw in different museums and galleries).
Well sorry, this ended up too long. Maybe I should rather go to a shrink

I agree with An: we could/should also explore other painters

Hi, again,
In order to drift away from the monothematic subject around Picasso, maybe you can google Emilio Pettoruti. An argentine painter who you may appreciate

Sorry, last intervention for a while and I let you "talk".
Elena, An, in line with the original intention of the thread, you might want to check this another argentine painter Victor Rebuffo. Look here:

http://www.artverbosubastas.com.ar/2008/di...50&lote=112

A hommage to Gaughin ...

I've seen recently the most important gallery that one has ever organized on Picasso. It seems that the insurance cost billions euros. Everybody waited 2h30 outside and the weather was very cold. Many night openings were organized, as there were too many people who wanted to come. Even at 4-5h in the morning, the rooms were crowded. The most extraordinary things I've seen are the charcoal drawings of Picasso when he learnt at the Art School. I've never seen so beautiful charcoals (very academic still lives). Nothing to do with Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Of course, I did not like everything he did.

To change the subject, here is a quick copy exercise I did several years ago (Rembrandt).

Speaking of galleries and Rembrandt, in 1999, I had the unique chance to see in London at the National Gallery, an exhibition of self-portraits, Rembrandt by Himself.
Given the fact that Rembrandt and Velasquez are for me THE Masters, par excellence, I fully enjoyed this event. It is known that Rembrandt, did about 40 oil portraits in the mirror, 30 etchings and lots of drawings of himself.
One of the major advantages of living in Europe are the museums and exhibitions.Holland, for instance, is a gem of art museums.
Seeing a painting in real life is a fantastic experience and no art catalogue can replace the feeling. I rememeber that between the age of 15 -19 while in hight school in Bucharest, Romania, i studied the history of art and had this huge art album as a free textbook to guide our studies.Well what i did to enrich my knowledge of art was to become a member of an art library and ckech out art books, biographies of artists, catalogues.
For four full years i covered all the European art collection of the library from Byzantine art to 20th c. art.
Leonardo's sketchbook, Leon Batista Alberti's works, Benvenuto Cellini's autobiography,Picasso's biography were my favorites.
What i couldn't figure out was the size of a painting in real life. So in Italy, when after many years I saw the famous painting by Botticelli, Primavera, I was surprised to find a rather small size painting which in my teens I imagined half the wall.
So size is important and the impact on the viewer is much depending on it.
I remember reading on Sumerian art and civilization and the fact that their invaders, people of the mountains, when they descended on Sumerian cities and saw the frescoes and basoreliefs, the sculptures and statues decorating the entrances to the palaces, got so scared that they fled the cities.
There are two museums which I visited that have good examples of this art, in Viena and Istanbul. The museum in Berlin I don't know.I heard is the best.

Thank you, Claudio for referring us to Pettoruti ans Rebuffo.The tribute to Gauguin is really good. I wish I could see more works by Rebuffo.
Pettoruti is highly interesting, I liked most his work Mujeres, seems to be done in the manner you can alter an image in photoshop these days. He is a great cubist and very pleasant to the eye. His work is not dry but has an intimate feeling.

Ok. After seeing "Mujeres" by Pettoruti I got the idea of having fun with vermeer's Girl. So this is a sketch of 5 minutes a la maniere de Picasso of Vermeer's Girl with pearl earring.The crayon version took me 15 minutes.

Good good. Now, Elena, take any photo of a real person (for example from a weekly challenge) and try to draw him (her) a la manière de Picasso. One must recognize the person. This is not easy, because you must emphasize the characteristics of the person.

Merci, An. La voila, a la maniere de Picasso, Mona Lisa of the North with a fauvist background.

This is the Oil pastel version of GWPE.

Click to view attachment

From this image I obtained numerous illusions in Microsoft Picture it image editor. You can see them here.

I chose one called Vegas that I also did in crayola crayons on Canvaskin pad 9x13.

editor Microsoft Picture it>

Click to view attachment

crayon drawing

Click to view attachment

Here I did some copying of Picasso's Two Saltimbanques, 1901, Pushkin Museum of Fine arts, Moscow.I recommend seeing the original because my copy is a faded printed page.

This was done on canvaskin pad 9x13in, on which i did an underpainting in watercolor the applied the oil pastels.It works fine with an underpainting and I will never apply oil pastels on canvas without an underpainting.One hour.

Very good copy: you got wonderfully the melancholic expression of the two personages. That's great!

An, it's true that I enjoyed doing this copy very much.Picasso seems so easy yet he tells so much in his art.

What I would appreaciate is a feedback on my Vegas version of Mona Lisa of the North. Personally i love the idea of leaving the face to the guess and also emphasizing the pearl earring as the main focus of the work.What do you say?

Yes, something fauve, you may say. There is a lot of ideas in this painting. I believe now you should start from a personal photo or live model to give freedom to your imagination.

This is again a copy of whom you know!

An, your study is fabulous but please identify your original with a link or photo. Not everybody in the web is familiar with European masters in detail.Just a suggestion.

copy of Portrait of a boy by P.P. Rubens.

Picasso in London. Picasso: Challenging the Past.

Superb copy of Rubens. Expressions of eye and mouth: perfect. Perhaps the left eye may be a bit displaced to the left side and some shadows added to the neck. Some more care for the hairs, may be. If I understand well, light comes from the left side. In all, this is really a piece of art.

Merci, An. It has to be retouched here and there, I know...how about this Picasso-ish approach to Rubens's Portrait of a boy?!

sepia on sketchbook.15 minutes, Rubens a la maniere de Picasso.

I think, for this drawing, you don't need to refer to Picasso. Just say:
Inspired from "Rubens's Portrait of a boy"

Do you recognize the master? Sanguine and two shades of sepia.1 hour. I plan to do it again on a larger pad. This is 9x12in.

second attempt on 11x24in. drawing pad. 1 hour.

As Rembrandt and Velasquez are my favorite masters of all time I attempted a rendering of Infanta Margarita. Sepia and sanguine on sketch pad 9x12in. 1 hour.

Thank you for all these posts, Elena! This work (much more than a sketch) is particularly successful ! I'm now in holidays (for a wk). I'll post some copy exercises when I'll be back home !