Our Lady Star of the Sea, Art Group: narrative & expressions in portraits

We started by looking at the Marilyn Diptych by Andy Warhol, The Scream of Nature by Edvard Munch and Myra by Marcus Harvey.  Through these images, we took time to explore narrative, process and emotion in portraiture.

We then considered the work of Nick Park and his characters Wallace & Gromit.  Amazingly one member of the group had met him and another walked by his studio in Manchester each day when he was a boy - it's a small world!

Nick Park used a mirror to practise the expressions of his characters so, as in all good learning practises, we copied the approach.

Using a schematic to help place the features, mirrors & images from newspapers, we had a go at drawing different expressions.

The brilliant work follows - very well done everyone!

Today was our last session.  

Thank you for making me feel so welcome.  Your work has come on in leaps and bounds and lots of learning has been done too!  Keep up the excellent work.

Our Lady Star of the Sea, Art Group: Leonardo da Vinci - portraits

Continuing our exploration of portraiture, this week we looked at the portraits of Leonardo da Vinci  1452 - 1519.

da Vinci, an Italian polymath of the Renaissance whose areas of interest included invention, drawing, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history and cartography.  

Da Vinci’s most famous artwork is “The Mona Lisa” 1503 - 6 (77 x 53 cm:  30” x 21”) oil on panel, The Louvre, Paris.

Da Vinci’s painting, “The Last Supper”, 1495 - 96 (180” x 350”) tempera over gesso, painted in the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan is believed to be the most reproduced religious painting of all time.

Leonardo da Vinci’s illustrated notebooks & bound pages are legendary and are still being studied today. 

Portraiture is a hugely wide subject.  Traditional portraits capture a resemblance or likeness to the subject.  An approach to understand how to capture a resemblance can be found in the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci.

The group used a simplified version of these to draw a generic, full frontal face.

Emphasis was placed on positioning the eyes, ears & mouth then the nose.

The second task was to take this knowledge and have a go at drawing faces cut from newspapers.  

The lovely results are below.

Well done everyone!

demo page

embroidered fabric & composition

The images speak for themselves - very well done everyone.  Beautiful drawings!

Art Circle takes a break now until 12 September when we return 11 - 12.30 at St Annes Library.

Fancy having a go?  

Please message me.

Monica

Monica

Derrick

Stuart

Dorothy

Will

Our Lady Star of the Sea, Art Group: Rembrandt - self-portraits

In the first of three sessions exploring portraiture we looked at the self-portraits of the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn    1606 – 1669.

Rembrandt’s self-portraits are extraordinary.  They have the fewest marks possible to make expressions come to life.

At the time when Rembrandt was alive, self-portraits were used to publicise an artist’s work.  They were also an ideal way to practise portraiture.  The subject is ready when the artist is and they don’t charge for their time.

Rembrandt's most famous work:

“The Night Watch” 1642 (3.63 x 4.37 m) oil on canvas is held by the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

The  work of the group follows.  

Well done everyone!  Apologies for resorting to Plan B but you all rose beautifully to the challenge.

Lee:  demo page (thank you for you assistance Mr Dee - most appreciated Cx)