Hello Friends, Fans, and Family,
I have expanded my course offerings at the Adams County Arts Council in Gettysburg, PA, and am now offering a mixed media course that will combine genealogy and mixed media art! Click on the link below for details” https://www.adamsarts.org/portfolio-item/your-family-story-through-collage-art/. Pictured below is a photo of the final project, which focuses on telling a family story, combining paint, drawings, and photography!
Hello friends, fans, and family,
I am teaching a beginner pastel art course at Adams County Arts Council starting on February 25th! To learn more, click here: https://www.adamsarts.org/portfolio-item/introduction-to-pastel/.
To watch a sample tutorial art video, you can click on the link for my youtube channel, Art of Schmidt: https://studio.youtube.com/video/_NLUVxpCJQ8/edit. In this lesson, I teach you how to make a color wheel with soft pastels. A color wheel is an integral tool for artists to learn how to use, no matter what medium, whether it’s watercolor, acrylic, oil, pastel, etc. It will help you learn how to mix colors and find color harmonies that will create a more cohesive piece. Thanks for stopping by!
About a century ago (well I exaggerate a little); I was a college student studying art at McDaniel College in Westminster, MD. I had a brilliant and successful art teacher named Steve, who demonstrated how the practice of art-making and the hatching of new ideas could be brought to life. He taught me many useful things, such as how to keep an art sketchbook pasted with photos of artwork by artists I admired, and how to write about my art in a way that expressed my unique artistic voice. Above all, his most important advice was that I should draw every day. At the time, that task seemed quite difficult. I was always an impatient artist as a student and I often rushed through the drawing stage to hurry up and get to the painting, the “good part.” Now that many years have passed since my graduation from McDaniel, I can truly see the wisdom of his advice.
With hindsight, I realize that he was so right about drawing every day. I no longer rush artwork and I have learned to love drawing, whether it becomes a painting or not. In fact, I have embraced his advice of a daily drawing habit and I have worked on several art challenges for both human portraiture and pet portraits on my Instagram account. One of these challenges is called 100 faces in 100 days, in which I drew a pre-selected photo of a celebrity using only pencil and paper. I did not add in a lot of detail or shading and I limited myself to 45 minutes a day. My latest art challenges were in October, in which I participated in Inktober, and also in December when I challenged myself to draw figures and portraits every day for about 3 weeks, with a pencil or whatever other media I felt drawn to use for the challenge.
The most important takeaway I can say about drawing and getting good at it is that it really helps your art practice to flourish. For instance, once you have the drawing and composition mastered, you can enjoy the next step more fully, whether it’s collage, painting, or some other art form such as graphic design or sculpture. With an accurate drawing, you won’t have to worry about continuing to fix it and can fully embrace your next steps.
In conclusion, I am currently preparing myself to teach a beginner’s drawing course at the Adams County Arts Council in Gettysburg, PA this winter, and the drawing practice has been great practice. To learn more about the course, Classic Drawing, please visit http://www.adamsart.org. I am realizing just how fundamental those drawing techniques of using basic shapes and practicing observing what I see, whether it’s a photo or a real-life object, are so important for accurate drawing. Here are some examples of the drawing exercises and projects I have been working on to prepare for this class. Enjoy! Thanks for reading!
Hello Friends,
I have added two new portraits I made of Abraham Lincoln, my favorite United States President to my Etsy Shop at https://www.etsy.com/your/shops/ArtofSchmidt. These two paintings are pictured below. I was inspired to create these pieces by a day trip to Gettysburg, PA several years ago, when I happened upon a gallery owned by Gettysburg, Pennsylvania artist, Wendy Allen. Wendy Allen has dedicated many years of her life to capturing the likeness of Abraham Lincoln in a variety of fun and colorful incarnations from Andy Warhol pop art inspired to the tonal art of Pablo Picasso. Also, because Lincoln is one of my favorite Presidents, I knew I wanted to capture him on canvas.
He is an inspirational figure to me for so many reasons and he never let any obstacles stand in his way. Although he had a limited formal education and very little encouragement from his father to discover his potential and unique talents, he went on to achieve the American dream we all aspire to achieve. His step mother, Sarah Bush, provided emotional support, and books, such as the Bible, Aesop’s Fables, The Pilgrim’s Progress, and Lessons in Elocution, to help Abe with his self-guided education. It just goes to show what can happen when someone believes in you, and you believe them!
In the meantime, I am also working on some acrylic paintings of Civil War Soldiers in watercolor and acrylic. I will be posting progress photos of these paintings this week. Stay tuned!
Art of Schmidt 